S.L.L.

So I'm throwing my hat into the podcast ring with Watchin' To Rasslin', essentially the podcast version of the All-Request Friday Nights I used to do over at Segunda Caida. Me and my guests will be watching matches requested by you - the listener - and give our delighted/horrified/perplexed reactions, hopefully to your entertainment. Sort of a little viewing party that you can join in on every week. I'll be joined on the first episode by CZW announcer Emil Jay and We Don't Know Wrestling host Sam (who may or may not have a surname). So far, we're looking at a California Championship Wrestling match from 1986 pitting Rocky Johnson against "Destroyin' Samoan", which promises to answer some longstanding questions about headbutts. Send some more picks my way, and tune in in a couple of weeks for the premiere!

I would never call him a bad wrestler in a million years, and he's certainly done plenty of things I've enjoyed....but I would be perfectly happy if I never saw Brock Lesnar wrestle again. He's good, to be sure, but I don't see him as the super-worker a lot of people seem to do, and the mystique surrounding him wore off for me a long time ago, so now he's mostly just another old part-timer who's job it is to make the rest of the roster seem unimportant to me, and I really didn't need another one of those.

Hang in there. We're all rooting for you!

As was I. Honestly the best show I've ever seen live. Riddle/Strong was the best match I've ever seen live. Darby Allyn getting back body dropped to the floor was the most psychotic bump I've ever seen live. Chuck Taylor becoming a watchable wrestler was the biggest miracle I've ever seen live. Just a great day to reward my faith in pro wrestling Darby is gonna end up in a wheelchair before too long. Besides that nutty back body drop, on both nights he did a trust fall dive off the turnbuckle to the floor, which was just as crazy. And he took a Super Razor's Edge. Not entirely sure how he walked away from that match.

I don't watch enough TNA to give a good answer to this question, but after The Final Deletion, I do want to book an industry-wide Crisis on Infinite Earths angle starring Matt Hardy as the Anti-Monitor.

As was I. Honestly the best show I've ever seen live. Riddle/Strong was the best match I've ever seen live. Darby Allyn getting back body dropped to the floor was the most psychotic bump I've ever seen live. Chuck Taylor becoming a watchable wrestler was the biggest miracle I've ever seen live. Just a great day to reward my faith in pro wrestling. Jigsaw/Sabre was the second best match of the show and really shouldn't be slept on. I always dig matches that have a clear three-act structure, and I loved how this built from a charming, light-hearted, Johnny Saintish WoS match into a nasty, stretchy, Terry Rudgeish WoS match into a crazy super indy finale. Jigsaw is a pretty underrated dude, and I hope EVOLVE gives him a decent spotlight.

"Has" is a strong word. They don't have the immediate financial incentive other than "we can do better", which doesn't seem to be enough without the alternative of "we will die if we don't". Even then, the people in charge seem so out of it that I'm not sure that would be enough. Like, they could legit be going out of business, and their response would be "we gotta double down on the 90's!"

I said this on Twitter, and I think it bears repeating here: whatever else you take away from this match, I think we should all be able to agree that this Christopher Guest-style mockumentary version of pro wrestling is a billion times better than anything Vince Russo has ever done in his entire pathetic career. Like, if Guest had ever made a movie about wrestling, I imagine it would've culminated in a match a lot like this between between #BROKEN Fred Willard and "Brother Nero" Eugene Levy, and I would've thought it was genius and made all my friends watch it. You could argue whether that technically makes it good or bad - and it was probably a bit of both, in the best possible way - but it certainly wasn't lacking in entertainment value, creativity, and even coherence, which is more than I can say for 99% of the garbage this promotion does even at it's best.

One of the greatest promos of all time. And influential on wrestling at that!

Is it weird that I'm glad to see guys dubious about the brand split? Because I'm cautiously optimistic about it as a guy who liked the last one, thought watering it down/ending it was a terrible idea, and I remember defending way back when against people using it as a scapegoat for every bad decision the company made (there couldn't possibly be deep systemic problems in WWE...if you get rid of the brand split, everything will get better!). So when this broke, part of me was glad, but part of me was grinding my gears that everyone else was glad, too. Like, I knew I wasn't alone in my opinions, but kinda miffed that this thing lots of people groused about that I went to the wall for was being welcomed back by everyone with open arms without so much as an "I didn't know how good I had it until it was gone". So I'm actually glad to see people who are dubious, just to know I'm still grounded in the real world, especially since their complaints seem more sensible than most of the ones I came up against back then. Truly, this is the best world I could have woken up to.

When I first heard that song, I thought it would be pretty neat if wrestling had it's own version of Take Me Out to the Ball Game or The Hockey Song. I also thought that probably shouldn't be it, but I guess it's what we've got. Also, I'm weirdly curious about the model-quality girlfriend's specifically designated "rasslin' shirt". So much to unpack in that song.

Since when is WWE topical?

Don't worry. Shawn Michaels being the Greatest Wrestler Ever is a terrible opinion regardless of gender. I kid, I kid. This is an excellent post, and there's a lot there worth thinking about. In fact...it's actually kind of an accidentally great argument for putting Trish Stratus on a GWE ballot when you think about it.

I'm not gonna sit here and pretend that Kamala wasn't a racist gimmick, but like Eugene's early run as a wrestling savant, I appreciated a lot of Kamala's 80's stuff where he worked as a clever African savage. No knowledge of English, barely understood the rules of his sport, but he got put in the Iron Claw once and never blindly charged a Von Erich again. He wasn't just a wildman, he learned from experience. Despite being a scary monster heel, he was a guy who did a lot of cautious backpedaling schtick. Certainly, a backpedaling black man could have some...uneasy connotations, too, but this is where the African savage gimmick actually kinda saves him. Kamala probably didn't blindly charge lions in the African wilderness, either. He was playing a stereotype to be sure, but just like Don Flamenco's stereotype was eased by being a smart and skilled boxer, and Eugene's stereotype was initially eased by being a wrestling savant, Kamala's gimmick was eased by being not just a dangerous hunter, but a clever one. Of course, all this goes to shit in his 90's WWF face run, particularly the whole "trying to pin the guy when they're on their stomach" bit, because now they were portraying him not simply as a fish out of water, but as actually, unambiguously dumb and as someone who had difficulty learning from his experiences. And, of course, there's the very real possibility that these are all narratives I've completely imagined that were never intended by bookers or promoters or even Kamala himself who just wanted him to be a big scary African savage, no more, no less. But I'm not 100% sure my interpretation of the character is total bullshit, either, because even if it wasn't meant that way, it wasn't until his 90's face run that they gave me any concrete in-text reasons not to take it that way. If I see a tree fall in the text, and the author doesn't explicitly say it didn't in said text, why shouldn't it make a sound? Granted, I think I might be the only one who ever heard this particular sound, but I'm a weird dude. This is all a very roundabout way of me saying that for all the talk some people make of wrestling being a lot like comic books, we could really use a Crisis on Infinite Promotions to reboot wrestling history. A guy like Kamala could really stand to have his slate cleaned and his history retconned to better fit into the Post-Crisis vision of wrestling. Pretty sure he's not the only one.

Sixthing, I suppose. I've long thought wrestling critical theory needs to have some kinks worked out. If there's real interest in examining that, I think that's pretty awesome.

It's something I've noticed for a very long time, and I was certainly not the first to notice it. I forget whether it was Phil or TomK who coined the phrase "great technician gimmick" - the notion that if a wrestling promoter tells people someone is a great technical wrestler, a lot of "smart" fans will buy it and lavish praise upon said wrestler even if their actual skills are suspect - but once I started thinking about that, I realized you could really expand that tactic to anything in wrestling. A while back, I made the point on Twitter that while Triple H is a great politician, and his ability to transform himself from a pariah among smart fans into a savior is genuinely impressive, the real skill there was understanding that that was the perfect market to con. "Smart" people are often the easiest to fool. They're so confident that they can't be worked that they never question when someone might be trying to work them. It's why a few of the well-educated doctors in my family are likely to vote for Trump this year. It's why one of their well-educated lawyer friends is a 9/11 truther. They're all so smart. Who could possibly trick them? So if someone tells them what they want to hear, why question it? Introspection is for marks. They're smart, so if it sounded good enough to be true to them, by God, it must be true. That's not to say this kind of narrative building in wrestling is an inherently bad thing, either. On the contrary, I actually think it's an inherently good thing, both because wrestling is storytelling (and calls heavily upon narrative to that end) and because wrestling is promotion (and calls very heavily upon narrative to that end). So the problem is really less with them than it is with us. Narrative shapes how we think about workers, and Johnny is honestly right that it should, but I would add the proviso that it should not be so simple as dumping ourselves into the box promoters and critics provide for us and leaving it at that, at least not if we're going to then pat ourselves on the back afterwords for how "smart" we are for doing so. Not that I think a whole lot of people on PWO do that. This board is legitimately smart, in part because we tend to look at the box and try to figure out whether or not we are really going to fit.

I agree. The fact that the gang at PWO can recognize that someone with an actual track record as a main event draw (albeit with an obvious assist from Hogan) is a bigger draw than someone with a track record as a box office flop despite the latter frequently receiving more hype than the former speaks very highly of this board's critical thinking skills. Only at PWO!

Mine are Jumbo and Toyota Probably am going to rank Jumbo somewhere, because I do like his late 80s stuff a fair amount, he will be way low though as I find his stuff before 88 or so pretty boring Toyota here, too, though I haven't completely dismissed the idea of ranking her...just almost entirely. I never soured on Jumbo the way some others have, but I can't deny he was hurt after watching the DVDVR All Japan 80's set and seeing he wasn't the clear-cut best guy on it, but rather a bronze medalist behind Tenryu and Hansen. Sure, those are great guys to rank behind, but when you're supposed to be the best of the best, it does take some of the air out of your candidacy.

I remember another Hogan one: his 21 minute standing ovation when he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. I don't know how long it actually was, but considering this was not long after Michael Moore's widely publicized 20 minute standing ovation after the premier of Fahrenheit 9/11 at Cannes, the hyper-specific 21 minute claim seems very...Hogany. I'm reminded of this after seeing this headline yesterday: Hulk Hogan left 'violently shaking' when sex tape made public Obviously, my initial thought is that Hogan is a guy who tends to violently shake a lot regardless. But my second thought is whether or not he's going to try to recreate - and then slightly exceed - Erin Andrews' reaction to her video, just because that seems to be how he operates a lot of the time.

Johnny's well of reaction gifs is as deep and powerful as the Mississippi.

Ummmmm....his run on Wrestling With Death clearly established him as a better television presence than most wrestlers working today. Also, he had a couple of years earlier this decade where he showed up on tape a lot and clearly demonstrated himself to be a top flight worker in the old territorial heel tradition. Here's the thing...I don't have a ton of exposure to him beyond that. I mean, if someone wants to point to his work outside his awesome '11-'12 run, I'm game to do a deep dive, because I did love that stuff, and I was vaguely aware of him before that, and he always seemed interesting to me. But I don't claim any real familiarity with it.

Man, I really want to go back and rewatch his GHC Jr Title defense against Momota from '03. I remember really liking that match, but the first thing that jumps at you is Momota stepping up to the plate. Would be interesting to go back with an eye on what Liger was bringing to it. Liger is another competitor for my all-time personal favorite with El Hijo del Santo, and like Santo, he feels like a top five guy to me, but probably not #1. Honestly, they're really lateral in my mind for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. I may just have to watch a bunch of their stuff next to each other to compare and contrast, though my gut says Liger is better if for no other reason than because Liger as heel invader in NOAH may be my favorite thing in wrestling ever.

I never saw a single person literally hang from the rafters at any show Gorilla Monsoon called. Unacceptable.

Glad El-P mentioned BAHU. I was thinking about him during my day today, and wondering how he's doing. I know we've all dismissed the term "Internet Wrestling Community", and the idea we used that term for is outdated and probably doesn't even really exist anymore, but...it is a funny little community we've had - and have - over the years, isn't it? And whatever corner of that community you came from - "US only" parts excepted, obviously - you probably really liked Hayabusa, and not a lot of wrestlers can say that. Even less can still say that now, but he can. In some respects, a guy who's career gets taken for granted, but the more you look at it, he was really a remarkable performer in many ways. He will be missed.

In thinking about Santito, he's really one of the more interesting cases of in-ring talent crossing with out-of-ring context to create the best possible outcome. I mean, that's gonna be true of every candidate to some degree, but he really hit the jackpot: an elite level worker, who's also the son of the most beloved wrestler who ever lived, and is tasked with carrying on his mask and his legend into the next generation. As great as he is, it's hard to imagine you'd be as compelled by him if his personal stakes didn't set things so high...but, of course, if all he had was his history, you'd just have Blue Demon Jr. El Hijo del Santo might be my favorite wrestler ever, and I kinda want to make an argument for him at #1, though I think that might be pushing it. That said, top five doesn't feel outlandish to me.