Eduardo

I remember Batista/Punk having good chemistry, and they had some matches I thought were good. I think one of them may have been at Great American Bash 2008.. I liked that Batista ate and sold Punk's kicks in a way that reminded me of late 90's roided-up wrestlers getting kicked in MMA.

Gross. Hunt. Sherwood & Sherdog.com (banned in 2005-2009; then again in 2010-2012). Reporter from Home and Garden has credentials though.

Only reason I even have a service provider at this point is to keep up with boxing through HBO and Showtime. But if there were something like HBOGo with live streaming, and the option of getting Showtime Anytime (which already has live streaming) without having to have cable/satellite subscriptions, I would have abandoned my provider a long time ago.

Network goes live right after Monday Night Raw on February 24th.

Dave keeps mistakenly referring to HBO when he should be saying Showtime for those "All Access" shows.

Any word if matches with blood will be in color or in black and white, like they did a few years ago?

Chael Sonnen knew his role completely, played up to it vs. Anderson Silva. And due to this UFC did some great PPV numbers. He wasn't even the #1 contender Who should've gotten the title shots Sonnen got ahead of him? He got the first one after beating Okami and Marquardt (well, and Dan Miller), then got the second one after beating Stann and Bisping. The only other guy "in line" in 2010 was Vitor, but Sonnen had really done more to earn it (Vitor beat Rich Franklin at a 195 catch weight in his UFC return). Unless you're arguing Bisping was robbed on the decision, who the hell should have gotten the 2012 shot? Hector Lombard in his debut? Vitor instead of doing TUF Brazil? Alan Belcher for how he beat Palhares? Also, to add to what Bix is saying, both Sonnen-Marquardt and Sonnen-Bisping were promoted as being title eliminators before the fights. Marquardt and Okami were considered the top contenders at the time when Sonnen beat them back-to-back.

The Brock match is my match of the year. Oh yes, can't believe I forgot that bout. That was a really great match.

I've been a big Punk fan for years but it's been a pretty bad year for him. Other than the matches with Cena (RAW) and Undertaker (WrestleMania), there is nothing else he's done this year that I would like to rewatch. During a time when Ryback had solid to good matches with Bryan, Cena, and even Gabriel and Kane, Punk just had several disappointing/boring matches with him during an awful feud. FWIW, I think Punk's just a much better heel than a babyface.

Will the turtle neck and/or the leather vest return is my question.

I'm on such a Brazos kick at the moment. Other families that should be thrown in there are Guerreros/Llanes (Gory/Chavo Sr. and Jr./Eddy/Hector/Mando/Javier/Enrique) and Casas (Negro/Felino/Metal/Pepe).

Agree that the first half was a bit boring. I remember thinking a Benoit-Angle match from a few months prior, at Unforgiven 2002, had a way better first half. I remember Angle-Benoit doing the bit where one of them takes the other's back, crosses his feet, and the other one counters by putting his legs over his opponents crossed-feet to put pressure on their ankles/legs. It's a BJJ technique to counter on the mistake of crossing your feet when taking someone's back.

Sweet, I wasn't familiar with "tuzado" so this makes more sense now.

Someone needs to have a thread on here about hyped-up boxing prospects who get exposed in amusing/entertaining/awesome fashion. Marcos Maidana deserves a gold medal for already having two of these epic moments in recent years, both of which produced "Fight of the Year Candidates". The first one was an epic, sprint of a war with Victor Ortiz, who Golden Boy Promotions was trying to push as their next big Mexican-American star. Max Kellerman before the fight wondered if what we were thinking/hearing/etc. of Ortiz was too good to be true. It was. Maidana and Ortiz forced brutal knockdowns on one another. But what everyone remembers, is what will follow Ortiz for the rest of his career -- Ortiz walking away in the sixth round, waving off the fight and contemplating whether he even wants to be a boxer. Ortiz has since gone on to become one of the most unintentionally hilarious fighters in combat sports. Everyone who saw his Facelube commercial will never forget it. Maidana had another epic night tonight. Fighting with Adrien "The Problem" Broner in San Antonio, this fight was originally rumored to be on PPV. Eventually the network decided that they were going to have it on their Showtime premium channel. The last time Broner was on the network was against Showtime-color-commentator/great-overachiever Paulie Malignaggi in June 2013. The fight delivered big ratings for Showtime, nailing 1.3 million viewers for the fight; more viewers than any other Showtime fight this year, including the big Canelo Alvarez vs Austin Trout showdown in April that drew 39,000 fans to the Alamodome. Showtime rolled out their "All Access" show to promote Broner-Maidana. In the past year, this "24-7"-esque documentary series has only been used for boxers like Floyd Mayweather Jr, Canelo Alvarez, and Miguel Cotto. So tonight was the big end of year extravaganza for Showtime, after what was a pretty great year for the company. A pretty hefty underdog, Maidana did it again tonight. So fucking aggressive early on, forced Broner down to the mat to secure a 10-8 round in the second frame. Broner tried to past by the rounds by using his defense, and being way too efficient on his output. Maidana was just going after him, landing some great left hooks and working over Broner's body. In round eight, Maidana got another knockdown. But Maidana was dumb enough to throw a headbutt, so it was just a 10-9 round for him since he got a point-deducted. Probably my favorite pro wrestling pay-back spot of the year was Maidana returning the Cassandro dry-humping spot to a huge crowd reaction, bringing it back full circle from Broner's initial dry-humping spot in the first frame. Maidana humping Broner. By the time the fight was over, even though I was confident Maidana won seven rounds, probably eight frames, including one 10-8, I was still unsure of the judges. We're so used to seeing bad decisions in combat sports. There's been plenty this year, but Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. vs Bryan Vera from a few months ago is probably the worst one I've seen in 2013. Scott Christ of BadLeftHook, who had the fight eight-rounds-to-four for Maidana, was sure that Broner was going to get the judges decision. Many were assuming the same thing. So it was fucking incredible that these Texas judges actually got the call right, and gave the fight to Maidana. Pretty great night if you're a Maidana fan. We've seen some great fights this year, so while I don't think this was to the bat-shit-insane-levels of Timothy Bradley vs Ruslan Provodnikov or Omar "Panterita" Figueroa Jr. vs Nihito Arakawa, this was still one of the most memorable fights of the year. Just a great way to end the boxing-year. Mauro Ranallo, who I actually think is way better as a boxing commentator than he ever was as an MMA commentator, summed it up perfectly: "Problem solved".

I rarely remember dreams. But last night, I had a dream that I ran into Dave Finlay and he wanted to work an angle where we exchanged forearms to the chest. After a quick exchange, he morphed into New German Cinema filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and we were on a first name basis. We had a brief conversation and I don't remember the rest. I had a lot on my mind last night, so maybe what's why I had such a bizzare dream.

I've been watching most of the PPV's live this year, but no way in hell am I going to miss Peyton Manning vs Tom Brady for this Survivor Series card.

El Dandy vs Javier Llanes (1994), Atlantis vs Blue Panther (1991 and 1997).

Might be number one. Personally, I had binge-watched goodhelmet's Guerrero set in the Summer of 2008 and afterwards, didn't watched anything Guerrero related in ages (until this past week). For lack of a better phrase, I "moved on". I actually wanted to start a thread last week (anniversary of his death) on the Microscope section of this forum about Guerrero. But decided to go back and rewatch a lot of his stuff before doing so. So far, I've only seen his late 1997 work, which is still awesome. Also, been going back and re-reading some great reviews that Cooke and Loss have written on here years ago. I was also curious to hear if people had different thoughts about him now than they did five years ago when goodhelmet's set was released.

Not WWE, but wasn't Paul Heyman pretty much in Joey Styles ear and telling him what to say in the 90's?

Don't care for neckbreaker-thing, but really digging the flying body press (which he's done at just the right moment in most of his matches of late) and hurricarana. Also been liking most of his matches since his return. I haven't seen last nights RAW but everything else I've seen from him has, at the very least been fun, and at best, been really good, borderline excellent.

True times a thousand. Rosa's Spanish gave me nightmares at the time. Her valet work was cringeworthy.

I think I remember that. Was that the match where Gabriel went after Ryback's leg? If it is, that was also pretty fun.

I liked Cena-Ryback on SD. Nothing worth going out of your way to see, but catching it on Friday night, I thought it was a fun, good TV match. I really like that Cena's added a flying crossbody block as one of his new signature moves. Also, the match made me think how Punk hasn't been able to have any fun matches with Ryback, while Cena, Bryan, Kane, and a few others I'm forgetting have.

Dylan, has Cena's return strengthened his case for you? Got the biggest ratings in two months in his return to RAW, although that didn't carry over the next week. According to Meltzer, early estimates of the HIAC PPV are up compared to two that preceded it. From a work standpoint, I like that he's added a cross-body block to his repertoire, and has used that in pivotal moments during his matches as of late. At the very least, he's been involved in four good matches since his return. While the six-man tags were a team effort, and Goldust was the MVP of those, Cena had his moments, using a neat hurricarana and also having fun exchanges with Cesaro. Also, now with Bryan stuck with the Wyatts and his screentime being scaled back, I'm thinking Cena's the clear WWE favorite at this point.