tim

Aside from the long rest spot, I thought that match was really fun as an over-booked big match, especially towards the end. Deflating ending, was expecting something screwy to happen with the DQ stip, especially with Punk so assured with the "you're gonna get DQed" in the beginning.

Shield/Allies MOTY for me, crazy good. Kofi/Ziggler was fun but that time could've gone for Cesaro/Miz to finish off the incipient MOTYC they were having. I still think this is a great show.

del Rio/Swagger sounds so fucking boring for WM but I do imagine it could be a decent match. Deflating ending though, although to be fair I wouldn't have been interested in the outcome unless Bryan or Big Mark won. The stuff with the final three was pretty fun though, and Mark was great.

Man that was some shit, that match was shaping up to be fantastic. They were pulling off the up and comer workrate midcard match really really well.

Yeah I liked Rio/Show a whole bunch actually, although it meandered at times. Would need to rewatch it, but I enjoyed it a lot. Shame about the botch at the end because I thought it was a great ending otherwise. Maybe a bit goofy but keeping with the spirit of the whole del Rio face dynamic.

Speaking of money: How much did Paul Heyman make from ECW when it was all said and done? By the time it went bankrupt at the end, was he pretty much back to where he started financially, or was he able to get rich off the profits made when it was going well? For the matter, what kind of money were ECW wrestlers making around its peak? for that matter, how much would a guy like Danielson have made in, say, 2005 working on the indies?

Can we get some top 10 mark matches lists going? Off the top right now I have no idea how I'd make one -- seems like he's had lots of awesome matches but not many that stand ahead of the pack especially.

Aw man they cut off the best part of the segment from that video. Here's a lesser quality video, but with the TRASH TALK. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV6_2Ap2KUQ

BIG MARK Man I haven't marked out like that watching wrestling in a looong time. I just had RAW on in the background doing school work, not expecting much to happen, and suddenly BIG MARK. THAT AINT ENOUGH. I will try to add a more lucid and meaningful post to this thread before long. Suffice to say I think a LOT of Henry as a worker.

Cena's execution of moves is fantastic more often than not. Of all the perplexing common Cena criticisms, that is probably the most perplexing. Bringing up the fact that Cena "never seems banged-up" the day after a PPV match as a way to criticize his SELLING seems like absurdity on the level no other wrestler would ever endure.

What rumble matches do you guys think were definitely better than this years? I haven't seen them all but of those I have I'm pretty sure this is my favorite. No real lulls, the eliminations were well done, some cool surprise entrants, bunch of fun moments, and everything with the final 6 was really well done. I think Ziggler should've maybe gotten some more big near-eliminations on guys like Cena, Sheamus, etc, and the ending could've been better, but I liked it a bunch.

I liked Rock/Punk quite a bit actually. Screwy finish was good and gave the event a certain 'special moment' that I though it needed in the wake of an obvious Rumble outcome. Not a great match or anything but there were some fun exchanges and I don't think it was ever boring for too long a stretch of time.

i thought that was one of the better rumbles i've seen

this is the most i've been excited for a wrestling event in YEARS, probably since i was a kid watching during 2000/2001 actually. its just that there seems like a lot of interesting possibilities for WM to shape up, with none being too much more likely than another, and this show should really start to see things come together. plus they did a great job with the rumble having lots of guys hot going into it, and of course rock/punk.

The Beatles had possibly the tightest quality control of their era making this a bizarre analogy. I love The Beatles, but tracks like Don't Pass Me By, What Goes On and One After 909 aren't going to make anyone's favourite song playlist. I really, really like Don't Pass Me By actually Beats me how it got a rep as a bad Beatles song.

I don't like Bret at all. Some months ago I watched some of his matches, wasn't impressed by them, and then went ahead a watch a whole bunch of his most highly regarded matches and almost every time I though Bret was just flat out boring. Even in matches where the match itself ended up being pretty good, I never noticed anything unique or interesting coming from Bret's end(which is something I value pretty highly in wrestlers, and why I love guys like Regal, Hash, etc. so much). The matches themselves I found largely overrated too, the Hennig matches I thought were nothing more than "good." Hell, if I was doing a top arbitrarily large number best wrestlers ever list, I'd start considering guys like Masters and McIntyre before I considered Bret. I'll take short careers without many notable high points but with plenty of unique and interesting performances over a solid, long career with a couple good career matches from a completely uninspired performer. For what it's worth, Bret/Piper is still a legit great match imo.

like all these sorts of questions, theres going to be an adjective problem. but there was a smackdown match vs. benoit in 2005 that i really really liked last time i was it 2 or 3 years ago. edit: also the rey match from 06. i guess i wouldnt categorically say it's "GREAT", where ever my barometer for great is, but it's close at least.

im great at math and grammar for real though as is probably somewhat obvious i dont really care too much about grammar per say, just that if people dont spell homopohones correctly they look dumb. not that they are dumb mind, they just LOOK dumb. so people should make some effort to get that shit right. plus to be completely honest, i only really support the rules of grammar and spelling because they let me look better than others in things like academic papers, formal e-mails, etc.

it is an understandable and i suppose little-known error; however, it annoys me nonetheless! though the exclusive use of commas would be employed by many in the preceding sentence, it would would still seem, however, rather awkward.

i think my number 1 grammar peeve is people not knowing when to introduce a however clause with a semi-colon rather than a comma.

2 + 2 = 4 in 'everyday arithmetic', but 2 + 2 may = 1 in arithmetic modulo 3 for example. 'have' and 'of' may be arbitrary in some theoretical language, but in standard rule-governed english they have widely different meanings, different spellings, and indeed different pronunciations, although in certain phrases dialects may be such that they sound similar! the rules of grammar are not eternally immutable like those of mathematics of course, but at any given time, let us say such a time as one is typing a post, we may hold the rules of grammar as constant and at such a time those rules apply to one's writing similarly to the rules of mathematics or propositional logic!

Off topic tangent but this is totally true, and if I didn't find the fact that this is such a niche niche NICHE level of fandom so fascinating I'm not sure if I'd have kept up with wrestling so much over the years. At this point I'll sit down a watch a match every 2 or 3 weeks maybe. But I spent a chunk of time reading the regular boards every day. In general I've just always been fascinated by odd left-field niches(I love Korean Historical Dramas for example). I always love reading discussions like this about what the 'critical consensus' was within this crazy wrestling niche group in years past.

Aside from liking it when I was like 10 years old I'll say this: about 3 years ago I got the inclination to watch all RAWs from the beginning of 1998 to Wrestlemania, and it was definitely fun viewing. I did skip through a couple especially shitty segments, but it really was very exciting programming. In that time frame at least.

"Like I said before, since I am champion, my price has to go up" haha holy shit, this is something you would write into a fictional story of this situation to make him sound like the biggest asshole possible

When did this happen exactly? I tuned in at the beginning of the del Rio match, found it odd the crowd was so dead, but didn't notice Cole mentioning anything until his announcement that he was going off commentary.