PeteF3

What heel stuff did Owen do in the indies? Besides his USWA work, I mean.

I don't think "imitation [x]" qualifies as a great gimmick.

Yeah, it was definitely moreso the latter--a curiosity. No way would they be busting their asses after such a monumental WWF title match. There's also the fact that the WWF never did the "We're out of time!" show-closer, so it stood out more.

Wasn't that a jdw-ism referring to Bob Ryder and 1wrestling.com? He certainly had more of a personal issue with Ryder than Keith did, at least as I recall.

I would say the opposite of odd--for a 2000s era smark fan I'd say his views are downright cliche.

You get a million of these in every wreddit Observer recap--the guy who does them downplays it and the jokes in general, but yeah, they're in the comments, usually multiple times.

Wow--I believe footage of the actual neck-breaking is considered Holy Grail stuff (there's been long-circulating partial footage of the match, but not the botched slam, if I have the story right).

Oh, and I forgot about that stupid triangle choke Kawada does that completely kills the crowd at a really hot point during the match--it may well be the dumbest thing I've ever seen Kawada do. No one in an AJPW crowd was going to buy a submission or even a pass-out-and-ref-stoppage at this point. Yeah, I wouldn't say it's a *bad* match either. But it's about ***. By the standards of 5-star WON matches it isn't good. I forget if Kanemoto-Wagner got 5* or not but that was another one that left me staggeringly underwhelmed. The worst excesses of 2.9-wrestling. Unlike Misawa-Kawada I would actually call it a below-average match, not because of execution or crowd reaction but because I simply didn't buy the story (such as it was) that they were telling.

And none of the head-drops mean a damned thing except in the Randy Savage "reviving elbow" sense where it's a cue for (usually) Misawa to hulk up. Not only is it bad selling and bad psychology but it's a very eerie-in-retrospect signal of where the AJPW style was headed.

"The day the man died" seems like it's exactly the time to be doing it, though I agree that Dave's wording could have been better.

Going to get overshadowed by Bruno, but the Mid-Atlantic Gateway has reported that #1 has died.

Austin actually tried to help Bret win the title on Raw, so he would make their match a title match--it was Undertaker who cost Bret in the cage.

The song was written by Doc Pomus, an all-time legendary songwriter who's responsible for basically half or more of Elvis' catalogue. Even for something as tossed-off as that it may not come cheap to re-up the rights.

That was great on all levels. Perfect fuck finish.

Pretty much no public attendance numbers for any event of any kind are legit. Though you can figure legit numbers from the WWE's SEC filings.

Asuka's streak should not end on a bells-and-whistles cheap screwjob where all the heat is put on the promotion and not her opponent. That would be Goldberg Redux. Whether it's Rousey, Charlotte, or someone else, when she's finally beaten it should be clean and decisive. But no, she shouldn't lose at WM at all, because you have a money match for next year if you keep her and Rousey both strong and unbeaten until then.

For someone who preaches positivity and fun you sure seem to have a real bug up your ass about what other people might enjoy. Here is the thing though. It would be one thing if this was revisionist historians trying to get to the bottom of conflicting reports and accounts of events, or new evidence coming to light in order to prove or disprove an urban legend. But this is more about crusades by anti-WWE PR spin machine types to flat out prove the WWE kayfabed (keyword there as opposed to a non scripted sport fudging numbers) their WM III attendance numbers. For no other purpose than to put up a big "GOTCHA! HA! HA! (that was meant to be in the voice of Nelson from The Simpsons). This is quite literally nothing like that. If anything Bix's argument (and mine as well) actually serves in the WWF's favor, because we're claiming there's *more* people there than the "real" number of 78.5K. I kind of wish 93,173 could just be ignored entirely, because neither the 78K believers or skeptics believe in it. Attendances are worked for every sporting event, wrestling event, concert, et al when released publicly--it's nothing unique to wrestling. But the figure's presence complicates the issue because a lot of the people supporting the 78K figure go by the argument, "Oh, you're just a WWF fanboy who believes what they tell you." No--both 93K and 78K can be wrong. This false dichotomy needs to be taken out back and shot.