tim

Which never ceases to amaze me because he's far more of a legend than anyone else they have on these shows.he could afford to be a bit humble because his legacy was secured long ago. Unfortunately, the arrogance that made him so awesome in the 80's and 90's doesn't translate well to a washed up old man. Here's a question I have no idea of the answer to: who is a bigger star to the general public, Flair or Foley?

I'm at least waiting for Bray to say that time is a flat circle.

What I love the most is that there is NO WAY this was the plan. The crowds booing at the Royal Rumble and during every Batista segment and chanting Daniel Bryan when WWE didn't want them to actually put Bryan into the Wrestlemania main event.

I think this opens up a new line of confusion. "Everyone" reads news from the sheets online but does that mean everyone is in any degree a "smart fan" or hardcore? In 1998 if you were reading that stuff chances are you were or soon would be an inside/hardcore fan. Probably not the case anymore. As much as this has to do with the difference in how people now interact with pro wrestling I think there's a difference in how people interact with the internet. In a sense I think it's hard for someone who started using the internet in the 90s or even very early 2000s to really understand how someone who started actively using the internet closer to the mid/later 2000s does so.

that match was actually damn good but it wasnt the right match to put on this RAW. with an atmosphere like this you don't want two upper midcarders in a not particularly interesting feud having a long singles match. unless it's part of a compelling angle with wrestlers the crowd feels very strongly about, keep it short and ideally in multi-man matches where things can keep moving and lots of signature spots can be thrown out to keep popping the crowd.

Tonight seems like a really hyped RAW in all quarters, interested to see the rating. And it's been outstanding. Loved, loved, loved that Shield/Wyatts match. I really wish the Shield wouldn't break up. Shield/Wyatts just NEEDS to be a Wrestlemania match.

There's a bunch of pretty highly ranked matches that I don't even remember. Good stuff. Heck of a year for TV wrestling. Here's a top 25 I made for a poll on another forum: 1. Brock Lesnar vs. CM Punk, Summerslam 2. John Cena vs. Daniel Bryan, Summerslam 3. Daniel Bryan vs. Antonio Cesaro, RAW 07/22 4. Roman Reigns & Seth Rollins vs. Goldust & Cody Rhodes, RAW 10/14 5. Roman Reigns & Seth Rollins vs. Goldust & Cody Rhodes, Battleground 6. John Cena vs. CM Punk, RAW 02/25 7. William Regal vs. Kassius Ohno, NXT 03/21 8. The Shield vs. Daniel Bryan/the Usos/PTPs/R-Truth/RVD/Kofi Kingston/Zack Ryder/Justin Gabriel/Dolph Ziggler, RAW 9/23 9. Goldust & Cody Rhodes vs. Roman Reigns & Seth Rollins vs. The Usos, Hell in a Cell 10. The Shield vs. John Cena, Ryback and Sheamus, Elimination Chamber 11. Antonio Cesaro vs. Sami Zayn, 2/3 Falls 12. Antonio Cesaro vs. Kofi Kingston, Main Event 04/30 13. William Regal vs. Antonio Cesaro, NXT 11/21 14. Antonio Cesaro vs. Sheamus, Main Event 06/05 15. Goldust & Cody Rhodes vs. Antonio Cesaro & Jack Swagger vs. Big Show & Rey Mysterio vs. Ryback & Curtis Axel, TLC 16. Dolph Ziggler vs. Alberto del Rio, Payback 17. Goldust, Cody Rhodes & John Cena vs. Damien Sandow, Jack Swagger & Antonio Cesaro, Smackdown 01/29 18. Alberto del Rio vs. Christian, Summerslam 19. Big Show vs. Alberto del Rio, Smackdown LMS 20. Goldust, Cody Rhodes & Big Show vs. The Shield, RAW 12/02 21. Randy Orton vs. Daniel Bryan, RAW 12/16 22. Goldust vs. Randy Orton, RAW 09/09 23. Bo Dallas vs. Sami Zayn, NXT 09/12 24. Joh Cena vs. Mark Henry, Money in the Bank 25. John Cena vs. Seth Rollins, Smackdown 12/27

Well, I feel like if WWE gets their booking act together (the biggest if ever spoken) we could be on the tipping point of one of the greatest overall runs any promotion has ever had. The focus on ring-work is there and the right style and super talented guys are coming together to take big advantage of that. There are lots of interesting top stars who are unique and fresh and some great guys coming up from NXT. If the creative side can match up to what the wrestling side has been doing it'll really be something special. That said, I really don't see how it translates into a "boom." The 80s and late 90s boom came because they had something unique to offer -- the 80s, the first national wrestling product with a big cartoony and over the top presentation, the late 90s with edginess and line-pushing to appeal to the kids. What do they have now to offer potentially, other than a great product, which doesn't spell 'mainstream' success in the way they had in the last two booms.

I don't think a guy like Okada could work. He works in NJPW because a flamboyant, charismatic young guy is pretty novel. It's not an America. Same with guys like Tanahashi. Nakamura is maybe just too "out there" although I think he has a better chance. The guy that jumps to my mind is actually Minoru Suzuki, a guy with a striking look, can work a no-nonsense demeanor and can be sold as a guy who comes out of nowhere with a unique set of very dangerous skills that everyone is at a loss as to how to guard against.

On Triple H starting, my initial reaction was to be kind of annoyed but then you see how he was smiling and seeming really happy about NXT getting its big show like this and I was like, alright Trips this is supposedly your baby and it's pretty great so I'll give you this one. Also, I want to rewatch Cesaro/Zayn before I say too much about it but I liked the one count spot a lot when watching it live. Felt like one of the few times that spot is good. It's hardly as if it's done to death in WWE and in the context of the feud I thought it made sense, and was appropriately right before the definitive ending.

its actually hard to believe

I feel like the volume really fell off after 2009 and only picked back up in 2013. That said both those years had crazy volume for very good-great matches. But I made a top 10 WWE matches of 2012 list for a project on another forum and after #7 I was kind of scraping at matches that wouldn't make my top 25 WWE this year. In fact I did make a top 25 WWE of 2013 list and it was very, very easy (to find matches good enough to list that is), and I could have probably extended it to 40 and each match would still have been worth going out of your way to see if you were actively watching wrestling throughout the year.

Watched Shield/Wyatts. American pro wrestling at its absolute best. A real classic.

Wow, I'll need to rewatch this one, that is some crazy praise. For my part I did like it a whole lot and thought it is either my #3 or 4 MOTY so far. One of the more well done multi-man every man for himself matches I've ever seen and there were a ton of cool things in it.

I ordered the WWE.com stream and my stream buffered unwatchably and wouldn't reload properly from Wyatts entrance until the big dive section. Awesome, great night.

For real. Like most people I was into a limited NAO nostalgia run when they came back, were very over and still looked competent enough in the ring. I wasn't into them beating the best tag team in years and years for the tag titles clean in a 10 minute pre-show match. Now they can fuck off and never come back.

Yeah I'm really looking forward to this too. The top two matches should be great, that Chamber is absolutely stacked and could be the best one yet. I could see the ending going a couple of ways. O'Neil and Young have also quietly been having one of the better feuds in a good while and I'm interested in that match. I hope they go full brawl rather than just working a regular midcard match in the midst of a heat feud like Damien and Cody did.

I watch wrestling completely differently when I'm watching a show live. Watching WK8 live, I enjoyed Shibata/Goto for what it was on the card despite knowing that if I were watching it as a stand alone match I would probably think it were bad. I also really, really enjoyed the opening tag on that show even though it's not a match I'd ever go out of my way to see on its own. The feel of the overall show matters more to me than how good each match is.

Meanwhile, there's a Masked Republic show in Philly in on 4/27. "Talent set for the show are LA Park (the original La Parka as seen in WCW, ECW and MLW), Dr. Wagner Jr., Sabu, Damien 666, Bestia, El Exotico Cassandro, Negro Navarro, Pequeno Pierroth and Solar." Getting to see Navarro vs Solar live would be pretty fantastic. Wow, news to me. I'll intend on going.

Has anyone here gotten into wrestling despite not liking before, say, the age of 12?

Jerry you probably have something about the internet affecting kids' cultural knowledge wrt 'iconic' Hollywood stuff like Godfather (that students didn't recognize that scene actually is shocking to me, I don't think that would be the case in the US), Dirty Harry, etc., as opposed to years ago. But you won't get me to buy that there was EVER a time after the popularization of University education that a significantly greater amount of students knew about the Romantic movement etc. Out of curiosity what do you teach, something English-y right?

I'm really hoping Titus and Darren go all out and brawl at EC rather than working a marginally-more-heated standard midcard match like the Damien/Cody feud saw.

I really, really liked the show tonight. One absolutely great match and some other good wrestling, and pretty much everything had a point. The Big E handicap match with Zeb on the mic was fun and something novel, Titus' interview was great, the Usos/NAO stuff was alright and at least demonstrated some effort in building the match. With so many lazy, lazy, lazy RAWs lately something like this where it actually looked like effort went into booking it will score points with me.

Pretty closeted. I would be embarassed if people knew. The unfortunate fact is if people know you like wrestling they are probably going to think lesser of you in any number of ways, specifically probably that you're less smart. I mean, if there were a way I could be "out" and only the people I already know well knew, then I guess I wouldn't care because they'd know me well enough to know that my liking pro wrestling isn't a reflection of me being dull or something, but if I were "out" then invariably some people I only know casually would also know, people I'm meeting for the first time might quickly find out before I make much of an impression otherwise, etc. This is probably the reason anyone else on here is "closeted" is so. As it is I have a good friend who I watched wrestling with some years ago, even got him into Japanese wrestling a bit, so he knows I still watch to some degree but we don't live too close to each other anymore and largely only talk online. My best friend thinks it's pretty much only that I somewhat keep up with it by watching a RAW every other month or something.

The recent changes in WWE style like we see in the Shield tags had gotten me thinking about what "workrate" means lately, because I just intuitively would call those sorts of matches "workrate-style WWE matches." I don't think it just means working hard, a lot of styles work hard that I wouldn't call "workate" styles. Nor does it just mean having a wide variety of moves performed necessarily. Anyway, I don't know how helpful it is and may be pretty idiosyncratic, but I came up with this definition that I like: A tendencies toward backloaded matches; that is, much more emphasis is put on the last third or so of the match than in trying to create a consistently compelling whole. This isn't to say the first two thirds or so of the match isn't good, but in the style they often won't be too impressive -- in short, when the match is over, you won't be thinking about the cool stuff they did in the beginning or middle of the match, you're meant to be thinking about how awesome the end was. So the extended home stretch is of great importance, and it's about more than hitting a lot of moves: just as important, it's about a lot of counters to moves. A lot of the drama and excitement is built off quick counters to signature moves and those signature moves being paid off later. "Innovation" is an aspect but again it's not so much inovation as using NEW offense, but finding new ways to work that offense into intricate sequences of counters and offense. If this definition has any value, it' moreso for the state of workrate style today than maybe it was in the early 2000s indies. The styles I have in mind with this definition are primarily current New Japan main events and the kind of WWE matches Bryan, the Shield, etc. have been putting on lately, because I think there are a lot of similarities between them (though I perfer the latter). I don't watch it but I would assume this definition works for the bigger ROH matches as well.