PeteF3

For the record, the one bump I've seen the Sheik take is in a RWTL match where Billy Robinson gives him a gutwrench suplex. Of course, if Billy told Sheik, "We're doing the gutwrench," then there wasn't a whole lot Sheik could do to stop him.

There's no way on earth I'd ever classify New Japan of any era as an "indy."

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.