tim

Byran & Brie vs. Steph and Trips, with use of initials on the line.

they should have gone all the way with daniel bryan as the hippie stone cold, have him come out with his tom's shoes and dennis kucinich campaign shirt

the wrestlemania press conference is bizarre

I loved that segment. Even Wade couldn't help smiling, you just knew everyone at that table knew Bryan was going to win and were loving it. Booker T marking out was awesome. edit: wrong quote

i dont get why they dont have the divas match on the pre-show. its only there to be filmed for total divas and it's not like the target audience of that show will care if it were on the main card or the pre-show, or even know what either of those terms mean. anyway, few things annoy me more than commentary actually referring to kane as "corporate kane"

Time for Bryan's big win to descend into a McMahon family drama angle. Daniel Bryan's gonna need to associate with some real star power to keep ratings up!

summer rae comes across as the least shitty person on the whole show by far edit: actually naomi is ok

So I keep hearing that Wrestlemania 32 will be in AT&T Stadium, though I haven't seen any official announcement to that effect. Is this just a bullshit rumor? Could WWE have a chance in hell of drawing 100k?

hahaha, that 1971 video is the best

What I wrote while watching it for Ditch's project: Color me surprised, Kobashi/Honda is no longer my Japanese MOTD. I remember loving this match when I watched it some years ago but god damn, it being THIS good was almost a revelation. I think I remember reading some criticisms of this match that although it had a dynamite home stretch the first half or so was lacking and I couldn't disagree more. This match was great all the way through. The Akiyama/Kobashi opening was great with Akiyama being a punk and an overly-long chop/elbow exchange actually serving a place in the story with Kobashi teaching Akiyama a lesson. The first Honda/Saito exchange is also absolutely fantastic, super hot and Honda gets the better of it consistently. This match does a great job both making Honda look very skilled in his own right but also the clear weak link, often falling prey to Akiyama and Saito and winding up in serious trouble. This match might be the height of Kobashi as Japanese wrestling God as this match makes him look like a larger than life superstar who is more than a match for even both Akiyama and Saito at once. Honda's FIP section is great and Kobashi's hot tag rules, he comes in and decimates both guys. Eventually though they get the better and it's Honda's turn for the hot tag which is just out of this world and leads to the real home stretch. For having such an ugly mug Honda is really has expressive and fantastic facial expressions. The home stretch is just up there with all the great home stretches of wrestling. Hot, brilliant, incredibly exciting but not over the top and a perfect ending. There's also too many cool little things in this match to name. This match absolutely blew me away. I feel like this would make its way into my top 25 favorite matches ever.

http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2014/03/japan-in-the-1950s/100697/ Photos of 1950s Japan, #19 is a photo of a large group of people gathered to watch a Japanese vs. American wrestling match on outdoor television screens.

This was a damn good match. Managed the milk the best of the NJPW style -- the high-energy exchanges, hot nearfalls, etc -- without falling into its usual traps -- over long length, boring opening section, no selling and ridiculousness. The opening stuff was fine, they didn't kill time on the mat and kept things lively with some moments of action. The bulk of the match was the extended stretch run which I thought was really good, lots of big moves that looked great and fun high energy exchanges. Only real flaw was how badly Ibushi's moonsault to the outside missed. Ibushi connects with some real nasty strikes here, his lariats looked great and he finishes a strike exchange by swiping Okada across the face with a big kick. One small feature of this match I liked was how Okada utilized some of his signature moves: he hits the flapjack right after putting his knees up for a splash and uses his fireman's carry neckbreaker thing right after sending Ibushi neck-first into the turnbuckle with a big dropkick (great looking spot by the way). This match does have the obligatory one count but, eh, whatever. Ending is great with Okada hitting a real nasty German suplex right into the Rainmaker. My NJPW MOTY by a good margin.

What's this story? I didn't start following stuff on the net til 2004 so there's probably a lot of well known dirtsheet stories from around this time I have no idea of.

Rockwell and the Mises Institute guys are pretty pragmatic (they were all about Buchanan in the 90s too) but they're very different from the Tea Party type. The Tea Party was 95% pure rebranding with the 5% being a slight de-emphasis on aggressive foreign policy. Even the more "dedicated" Tea Partiers would be more interested in reading the Federalist Papers than Human Action. Actually, I'd be interested to know how much Kane is into the founding fathers reverence stuff. For fun though, here is Kane's incredibly poor argument (even on his own terms) against equal pay: http://fff.org/explore-freedom/article/fallacy-equal-pay-equal-work/

The Usos vs. The Real Americans vs. The Rhodes - Usos retain. I see this being a 3-way after Main Event. This should be nothing less than very good. Hope it doesn't get shafted for time and only go like 10 minutes. Give them 15+ and you have my pick for match of the night. Battle Royale - This is hard. I'm gonna go with Sheamus since apparently there was that memo passed around that had him as one of their top stars post-Mania. I actually think this will be good. Once the first 20 guys get sent over the top there will be enough solid mid carders that I think this will have a very fun ending stretch. Divas - AJ loses. I'll say to Naomi. I hope not but they need that moment probably for the mid-season premier of Total Divas. Bray Wyatt vs. John Cena - I'm gonna go with Bray. Honestly I think if Cena goes over I'm legit gonna feel like a lot of anti-Cena net smarks will. I want to see him put over a young guy here. Somewhat interested in the match. Shield vs. Kane & NAO - Shield. Ugh. You have a team of should-be future main eventers who have KILLED IT for the past year and on Wrestlemania you put them in with 3 decrepit old guys. No way can they keep up. I really wish they'd give the Shield a chance to bring the house down with an awesome 6 man on this show. Oh well. Match will be average. Brock Lesnar vs. Undertaker - Taker. I expect it to be better than Taker's last several WM matches. Triple H vs. Daniel Bryan - Bryan. Should be fun. Given the added stipulation and my lack of faith in WWE, there will probably be multiple HHH near falls that give me a heart attack. Daniel Bryan vs. Batista vs. Orton - Bryan. You really gotta think they have to put Bryan over. Hopefully should be fun and drama filled. Feel good moment ending will be nice. WMX ring full of babyfaces ending celebration please. Should be a pretty good show. Should and could have been much better. Still should be better than the last several WMs. The Bryan saga should help with the big show feel. Close roof stadium should help the crowd heat.

Do we have good ideas as to why that changed? WWE hit a boom in the late 90s pretty much entirely on the back of the promos and lots and lots of talking. Why would they want to drastically change something that brought them so much success?

Definitely agree that there has been a leveling in the style. Seems like everything is now an heir to workrate juniors style. The genealogy of that would be interesting. This is just stream of consciousness but it seems like the WCW Cruiserweight division played a role in that. Workrate juniors style in the US was very different before and after that. How important was the Smackdown Six? When did the change really start in Lucha? You can see El Dandy wrestling pretty juniors-y on the Lucha Set.

This has been a pretty hot button issue and a top complaint online for years now. The story goes WWE promos have declined in quality because they've become far too scripted. So, how true is this? How scripted were the promos throughout the 80s and 90s? Were they always just as scripted as they supposedly are now? When did the ramp up in explicit scripting start? Do we have good info about this stuff? The reaction I'm seeing some places to Undertaker's Main Event promo last night got me thinking about this. A lot of people felt it was too scripted and cheesy. For me this has really seemed like a problem for Daniel Bryan. Talk about a guy who sounds like he's reading off cue cards all the time, very vacant and artificial. Sometimes his fire shows through and it can be great but since the Authority angle started whenever he goes out there with Trips and Steph to do a long promo segment I think he often sounds very bad. I don't remember top guys of the past sounding like they were reading off cue cards, even when they were very catchphrase-heavy. JR on his recent podcast with Mick mentions that their famous sit down interview wasn't scripted at all? Didn't sound like BS from them. Could such a segment be done today without being meticulously scripted by guys who never get in front of the camera?

Kane is more a Tea Party "libertarian" rather than a deeply philosophical libertarian. Not dissimilar to where a lot of people who were typically GOP ran to during/after the Bush years and "Republican" made some of them a bit uneasy. This isn't really true. Jacobs is a believer in Austrian economics, very familiar with Mises, Rothbard, et. It is true that he is somewhat wedded to the Ron/Rand Paul political strategy, but I know for a fact he is more deeply philosophical than a lot of people who are actually in the LP Yeah, dude has writings up on Lew Rockwell's website. He's pretty close to as philosophically into it as it gets. Which is funny since Bryan at least used to be a total Chomsky reading commie.

Ross running through the WM card is great. "The 30 Man Andre The Giant Memorial Battle Royale -- thank God I don't have to say that for a living."

The nature of how he is over has changed, definitely. It doesn't change any of your other points in that post, I just wanted to point out that when Bryan GOT over it wasn't really in the role of smark hero who is being held down. There was some stuff with Vince during the build to Summerslam but it felt very minor and tacked on really. What got Bryan over was being super intense and looking unstoppable in the ring. Even with the fans hijacking segments I'm not sure that's a sign of him being any more over than he was, just a crowd reacting to different circumstances.

I'm not sure about this. I don't know that Daniel Bryan's gotten any more over since Night of Champions, not that he's gotten any less over. He got super around the stretch of after Wrestlemania to Summerslam and what really got him over was just kicking ass, being intense and winning (or at least performing VERY strongly in) big matches against top guys. I don't know that the constant screw-overs have done him any particular favors; I don't know if they've done any damage either though.

eva's family became super heels last season when her mom basically said "if you get divorced we'll disown you" and the brothers got mad because they told them they're getting married rather than ASK PERMISSION.

eva marie's family is so terrible that they're able to make her and her husband likable on this show. now thats just good booking.

Now that's what I want to see, a study on the match quality opinions of the legendary but elusive "casual fan."