tim

Couple months ago for another forum I did a list of best WWE matches from Wrestlemanias 14 to 29. My top 3 in order were Cena/Umaga, Eddie/Rey from Smackdown and Punk/Bryan from Over the Limit. I have been half wanting lately to watch a bunch of high end WWE to get some idea of what my top 20 etc of all time from the promotion would look like.

I think he's one of the more purely talented wrestlers ever. Talent is a great base but doesn't necessarily mean it'll equate to a whole lot. I like some of his matches where he goes off his own beaten path a bit. I remember really liking Mark Henry vs. Kurt Angle from Judgment Day 2006; then again that memory stems from watching it once, in 2006.

YES. I love Big Dave. If he makes a surprise return during the Rumble I will mark my ass off.

Got the VHS set of all the Wrestlemanias up to 15 when I was in 5th grade. Marked out like fuck for that.

Cena's ranking alone makes it surprisingly not as bad as it could be.

I watched it semi-recently, couple months ago I think, and I thought it was pretty not good. Maybe not bad, but not good. The thing is, I see why it was popular at the time. WWE and TV wrestling in general was coming out of a period where workrate was VERY de-emphasized. Even in like 2000 and 2001 where WWE was trying harder to put on great matches, they were usually "great" over-done gimmick matches, not workrate/athletic stuff. So two guys kicking out of finishers, cutting a fast pace and doing submission reversals got people going nuts. But I mean, that's all it is. Like all wrestling fans, I dig a match with a fast paced, exciting counters, lots of big reversals and hot near falls, etc. But in this match they just weren't any good. It was just move, move, move without any of it being especially interesting or good. The submission reversals were pretty neat I'll give it that. That stuff eventually got ruined by overexposure but here it was cool. Relatively small part of the match though. And it had no build at all, totally boring, meandering stuff until they got around to hitting suplexes on each other over and over.

Didn't the majority of people always only care about what is "cool and new?" Weren't the type of people who had an interest in looking through the past to find the best of whatever media relatively small? If anything the internet increases the numbers of such people with access to critical consensus and ability to download. Essentially everyone I know is interested in watching good movies, reading good books, etc from whatever era. The majority of people probably aren't. I don't think any of this is anything new.

The crowd was clearly very into the main event.

Awful, awful, awful boring ending that leaves absolutely no interest for WWE going forward. I liked parts of Orton/Cena. Cena unscrewing the rope to catch up to Orton on the ladder was cool and there were a couple other neat things. But overall I thought it was more boring than not, though that might have just been my mood about the match. But yeah, was an awful ending in all respects.

Fuck I'm tired of the Wyatts already and this feud isn't helping. They should just be smashing people and having Bray direct their rage in a totally unpredictable and chaotic manner rather than these weird fixations on random dudes like Kane and Bryan leading to boring feuds and awkward soliloquies.

4-Way Tag: Yeah, great stuff overall as to be expected. One thing though, the beginning of the final match-up after the Real Americans got eliminated was kind of awkward considering it felt like the crowd was expecting it to start off hot and immediately as it had been going, and it seemed like it took awhile for the crowd to get properly into it. But yeah, the final match up settled into being really awesome with the Cody/Rey stuff being fantastic. Goldust's super-extended FIP was a master class and the crowd was super into Big Show who was great here. Loved him KOing the Real Americans for their elimination. Honestly, Goldust strikes me as a perfectly reasonable pick for WKO100 #1.

Big E vs. Sandow: Fun midcard match, Sandow does some neat stuff and in general they kept it interesting throughout. Nothing exceptional really, just a solid enjoyable match.

Fun stuff, nothing I'd watch again but good for a match that was in itself almost half way a segment as well. Crowd was really into it, augurs well for the night. Sad about the impending breakup but man was that a nice spear to Ambrose.

I'd honestly rather a bullshit finish than a clean finish with either guy winning, which would just be boring as anything.

Overheard some old guy on the front of the bus use the names "Jumbo Tsuruta" and "Genichiro Tenryu" in a conversation the other day, couldn't make out what he was talking about otherwise.

Wow this was awesome. The brawling was great and I loved Taue going after the knee: targeting in on a body part might not seem like normal pro wrestling "brawl" convention but it makes total sense in a fight, and Taue just desperately went at it with no finesse, grabbing on as if debilitating Kawada was his only ticket to survival; and Kawada was always right there throwing wild kicks trying to get out of it on the mat. The homestretch was great too, full of hot exchanges and counters but not really in the over-the-top way you usually get out of AJPW matches, just a relatively short burst of action with some really cool spots like Taue backing Kawada into the corner with palm strikes and proceeding to hit the DDT off the ropes. And the ending was sick as hell, beautiful stuff. Oh and the blood, yeash, Kawada's face covered with Taue's blood from the headbutts is one nasty visual.

The crowd going nuts for D Bry during this segment was one of the best moments of the year.

I don't know if anyone is saying Bryan's being straight up buried and having his career destroyed on the undercard. But he is being held back in the mid card. He's in a great position in his career right now, but he could possibly be a lot more. He's still outrageously over with the live crowds and has a lot of charisma. Maybe he couldn't have been a really big star but he has obvious potential and they didn't really try. Instead they just kicked him back down to a midcard feud and kept Randy Orton on top for pretty much no reason except that he's their guy and Bryan really isn't.

Finished today. Great, great set overall but ends on a down note as the last two disks are probably the weakest overall. LUCHA SET MVPs: 1. El Satanico 2. Sangre Chicana 3. El Dandy 4. Mocho Cota 5. Atlantis Current top 20. Aside from one or two matches these are just the ongoing rankings I made in real time without rewatching anything, so this may look well different when it is finalized many months down the line after I rewatch some stuff: 1. MS-1 vs. Sangre Chicana (9/23/83) 2. Gran Cochisse vs. Satanico (9/14/84) 3. Mocho Cota vs. Americo Rocca (1/27/84) 4. Espanto Jr. vs El Hijo Del Santo (8/31/86) 5. Sangre Chicana vs. Satanico (5/26/89) 6. Sangre Chicana vs. Perro Aguayo (2/28/86) 7. Emilio Charles, Fabuloso Blondy y Pirata Morgan vs. El Dandy, Atlantis & El Faraón (7/21/89) 8. Espectro Jr., Satanico y MS-1 vs. Mocho Cota, Sangre Chicana y La Fiera (9/30/83) 9. Solar, Ultraman y Super Astro vs. Sergio El Hermoso, Bello Greco y Rudy Reyna (2/26/84) 10. La Fiera, El Faraón y El Egipico vs. MS-1, Satanico y Pirata Morgan (3/29/85) 11. Pirata Morgan vs. El Dandy (9/23/88) 12. Atlantis vs. El Faraón (3/22/85) 13. La Fiera vs. Babyface (8/15/86) 14. El Solitario vs. Dr. Wagner (12/1/85) 15. El Dandy, Magico y Super Astro vs. Gran Cochise, Javier Cruz y Javier Rocca (11/11/87) 16. Arandu vs. Guerrero Negro (1988) 17. Mogur vs. As Charro (9/18/87) 18. Pirata Morgan, Hombre Bala y Verdugo vs. Atlantis, Angel Azteca y Ringo Mendoza (3/88) 19. Pirata Morgan vs. Brazo De Oro (11/17/89) 20. El Satanico y Espectro Jr. v. El Faraón y La Fiera (8/12/84)

I don't see why Dandy wouldn't have been able to work as an NJ junior. He can fly, he can MORE than do the mat stuff on the level NJ juniors were doing, and watching stuff like Charles v. Dandy on the lucha set you can see he wouldn't have any trouble trading big moves and working near fall exchanges. I mean, of course you can see tons of evidence that point to a guy's being able to do well in a certain style but when he's IN that certain style it turns out he just doesn't take to it, but the signs point to Dandy being able to have some damn good workrate heavy junior matches.

I can't say I read every thread here or anything but nothing seems to be at the level of affecting the quality of the forum. In general I prefer a hands off policy except in the most extreme circumstances. The people here are all at least reasonably intelligent adults and can manage themselves just fine. If someone is literally following a poster around into every thread to troll them, or getting wildly off topic to the point they are un-ignorable, etc etc, then intercede; otherwise leave everyone to their own devices. Posters here seem to be doing fine at their own devices anyway. That's my "philosophy" toward message boards anyway.

I don't know, if we wished us cancer and AIDS I could see banning him, but he gave us the choice ...

So hey that Shield tag was really good. Short but choke full of cool stuff. Cool opening moving immediately into a top notch extended Goldust comeback, cool stuff from Rey and nice ending featuring Reigns killing dudes with spears.

I don't see it ending at TLC. Honestly I see one guy falling off the ladder with one title as the other guy falls off with the other or something equally gimmicky and uninteresting.