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One thing I never understood was why he had a reputation as being a stoic guy. Misawa is obviously the stoic one and Kawada was very prone to intention emotional outbursts in matches all the way from the Revolution days to the end of his career.

His matches with Choshu suck but I'm putting that squarely on Choshu, who seemed to be going out of his way to have shitty matches with the top level guys in 1986.

Finlay is another guy, maybe an even better example than Arn of enjoying a guy for his individual performances more than the sum total of his match quality due to positioning on the card.

Bo Dallas sucks, too, though.

Generally in my head Attitude Era is 1998/1999 but sure I'd push it to 2000 as well. It's just a really great match with greatly defined and portrayed roles in a period where such matches and match quality in general was such dogshit outside of just a couple of people. A great title match that doesn't involve Austin or Foley dying to get someone over is very rare in 1998/1999 so this has always stood out to me. And also putting the "X-Pac was never over" shit to rest. X-Pac was crazy over in 1998 and most of 1999. Dude was ending shows doing the beer bash with Austin on the reg.

And also has hilariously weak looking strikes. The clips from the match with Bulldog Jr. were so, so bad I don't know how people weren't laughing in the audience.

Yeah mostly. He only comes alive when he can do some CZW trash or in a NJ ring. In AEW he's very much settled into the lazy, seemingly completely bored and unmotivated guy he was for much of the last 2-3 years of his WWE run outside of a handful of performances. Seemed to start with the terrible Jericho feud and just stuck with him.

I understand cutting the people they haven't used in ages, but it seemed like they gave Billie Kaye a lot of screen time the past 3-4 months. I don't know why they bothered putting in so much time to get her a story for WM just to cut her immediately after along with her partner who they thought had way more upside and did nothing for in the same period.

Just watched this, was real interesting because Fuchi hadn't really grown into his dickhead persona and style yet, and Kobayashi was always more on the aggressive heel side of things. The match starting with Kobayashi bum rushing Fuchi like a cheap heel, but then throughout the match everything turns and Fuchi is being the dick we'd come to love and Kobayashi is bleeding and getting big face heat. I don't know if it was a contextual thing or if it was something of a double turn for both going forward, but it was a real fun match and certainly a lot better than the Choshu/Hansen match the same night.

Well to take this back to Arn, I feel like for me Arn is a top 10 because his performance is always at a 5 star level no matter the opponent, spot on the card, length of match, angle going into the match, etc. He doesn't have the match out put like a Misawa/Jumbo/Flair/Okada because he was never put into that position and wasn't that kind of wrestler. But there are few guys I enjoy watching more than Arn Anderson even against some real shitty guys.

X-Pac vs The Rock at Capital Carnage 1998 is excellent work from both guys, standing out all the more because it's on an atrocious UK PPV. It's under 15 minutes and is probably the best Attitude Era title match that didn't involve Austin or Foley, imo.

Oh most definitely, Flair does arm work all the time that never ever goes anywhere. Especially in matches that go over 25 minutes. Pure filler work. He usually doesn't even start going into attacking a leg until the last 5-10 minutes in long matches, and in shorter matches usually not until the very end.

I wasn't around for the last time but I've shit talked Flair for so long online and in the past 2-3 years I've seen way more pre-Horseman era stuff that I think I'm going to have to eat shit and put him in my top 10.

Whatever the story, I'm glad he got that WWE run even if it was too late and wasn't what it could have been. Imagine the legend of Samoa Joe ending in 10 years like the last 4-5 years of his TNA run.

Joe is the most interesting cut there, seemed like they were pretty high on him in his out of ring role considering they used him all over both Takeover stuff and Wrestlemania. I wonder if he quietly retires and sticks to voice over and gaming stuff, if he continues to do commentary somewhere (AEW can't seem to hire enough commentators), or if he has one more in ring run left in him. It'd be cool to see him get a NJ run but I don't know if his body will hold up.

Was there some story to the Hansen/Choshu match 4/5/86? Sure seems like at the end Choshu gets pretty uncooperative, Hansen gets real pissed yelling out FUCK YOU, MAN after hitting a lariat, then hits another, then hits a big boot, then goes for another lariat and bumps the ref and Choshu immediately pops up to hit him with a backdrop as they go for a fuck finish. Then instead of of the normal angry post match brawling, Hansen and his crew just kind of stand around looking mad but not doing anything and calmly walking of until Hansen comes back later when Choshu is getting his trophy and belts for a more normal post match situation. The whole thing seems very weird.

From the little in ring footage I've seen of him, almost all well outside his physical prime, I bet he was a fucking blast to see when he was an actual worker.

Well there was some real implication that if you called the Hotline, Ole would tell you sex stories about Missy and the Nasty Boys. If someone was into it, I hope they were put on a list and are still tracked to this day.

What kind of psycho was calling the WCW Hotline in 1993 to talk to Ole Anderson at midnight?

What do you do with guys who don't have a long list of 5 star matches, but their performances are always 5 stars? Or how do you weigh guys like Regal and Arn who are clearly great but whose roles didn't necessarily give them big show case matches like Flair or Jumbo or what have you?

The twist being actually nothing like Bock/Funk/AJPW.

Yeah, that's the main issue I have with AEW booking. They don't do much with all the extra time between big shows and so they're just spinning their wheels repeating themselves for months. Which on the other hand works out if you just want to tune in every 4 weeks or so, you'll be caught up on everything and not really miss anything through to the next PPV either.

I haven't enjoyed his heel work at all, in either run, and I think a large part of it is they continued to have him be a dude who it basically takes a building falling on to keep him down for a 3 count, which can work as an underdog face finally conquering the heel, but is real eye rolling when he's such an undersized heel. Another part is the dude should have been out of NXT at least a year ago, if not nearly two years ago now. Same for Cole and Ciampa. Dudes have just been spinning their wheels for ages with everything they've done feeling forced because presumably HHH/HBK don't want to let them go get lost in the shuffle on the main roster. I would say Gargano is such an over the top cartoon heel that he comes off very silly. He was probably the best babyface in the business for a year run there, and it really feels like he just has nothing to do in NXT so they have him as a heel because he can't keep doing the face thing at the top of the card forever. Which is usually the point where okay it's time to move to Raw or Smackdown, but they just won't let him go.

I feel like I could much more easily get into Valentine stuff I haven't seen than I could Piper, but they do have an overlap of two guys I don't care for producing a match I think is really great.

Dude is just brutal to get through in WCCW, imo. Only guy worse with weaker looking offense at the time is Magic Dragon. When he first returns to AJPW under the Kabuki gimmick, he feels like a star and works much better, but within a year or so he's back to World Class laziness outside of the occasional bloody brawl. I remember downloading stuff from Ditch and he'd have blurbs about man great uppercuts how could I have ever not liked this guy...but that seems like the only thing he does well in the ring.