S.L.L.

I've watched enough shitty, overblown HHH "epics" to get a sense for what HHH's vision of what professional wrestling should be, and when I compare and contrast that with what's happening in NXT, I really wonder if we overplay the degree of credit that we give him for how good it is.

Well now I'm gonna be spending all day racking my brain to see if I can come up with anything as awesome as the Don King Conundrum. You set the bar pretty high with that one.

Quality stuff. Really enjoyed it, definitely looking forward to more.

So he should never lose it because they won't let anyone become the next super duper megastar, or he should lose it at Mania because Reigns has been deemed the next super duper mega star whether he actually is or not?

The booking looked good on paper if the bookers were trapped in an underground bunker and given no contact with the outside world for the last year and a half. Once you actually put the booking into some kind of context, it immediately becomes obviously terrible.

I brought this up on Twitter, but if they were dead set on Reigns winning, there was nothing to gain by even having Bryan in the match. I didn't know Bryan was ready to come back before he announced he was entering the Rumble. Did you? I wouldn't have complained about him not being in it if they hadn't told me he was ready to go. Reigns winning wouldn't have worked either way, but if Bryan wasn't there, at least you wouldn't know you were being denied the obvious superior option. Loss is right. The only only function Bryan's entry into the Rumble served was to bury their most over act out of spite to the audience.

How dare wrestling fans want wrestling that they're a fan of? Why can't they just mindlessly accept whatever drivel the company shits at them, like TNA fans? RESPECT! RESPECT! RESPECT!

Am I crazy for thinking the best thing they could do with Rollins right now - and by extension, Reigns and Ambrose - is to run an angle where it's revealed the Shield breakup was just a ruse to infiltrate the Authority, leading to them reuniting? I know it wouldn't make any sense given what's happened since the breakup, but you know what? Most of that stuff, including the breakup, didn't make any sense either. At least this would not make sense and lead to something cool that people would actually want to see.

I was so bummed when the WeeLC match didn't happen. Didn't happen? It was one of my favourite matches last year. I'm confused. Excuse me, not the WeeLC match, the Mini in the Bank match.

I was so bummed when the WeeLC match didn't happen.

PUERTO RICANS! OUT FOR BLOOD! THE LITTLE PEOPLE! MAKE ALL THIS POSSIBLE! THE NOBLE KRABBY PATTY! FALLING WITH STYLE! WHOSE KUNG FU IS STRONGER?! KAIENTAI DOJO! DELIVERS THE GOODS FOR ONCE! ALEXANDER OTSUKA! STIRS UP WARM AND FUZZY MEMORIES! ALL-REQUEST FRIDAY NIGHT EARLY SATURDAY MORNING RIDES AGAIN!

The fans don't owe the business. Maybe if the business wasn't openly hostile towards the fans, the fans would give them a little more leeway in return, but that's probably never going to happen again in our lifetimes barring a miracle.

Post a link. I'll definitely include that.

Back by popular demand (several years ago that has probably since evaporated), my weekly All-Request Friday Nights return to Segunda Caida starting this Friday, January the 9th. That's where you - the reader - request matches for me to watch and review, and I review five of them every week, sometimes to my delight, sometimes to my regret, but hopefully always to your entertainment and enlightenment. So get your picks in now, and let's see where this Friday will take us. Segunda Caida, the stuff internet wrestling dreams are made of

What was I trying to do last year before I got sick? Yeah...that. Of course, the 80's Joshi set has since been cancelled, but we have enough really good footage that I'd like to do something with it, especially since it might still come in handy for the GOAT project. Hey, fun fact, my original comeback project was going to be centered around the massive improvement of Seth Rollins. Boy, did I dodge a bullet on that one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL6h2pss7CQ

Yeah, issues of journalistic integrity interested people before Gamergate, and will continue to interest them afterwords. And who are the most vocal critics of what Dave considered doing? Actual journalist Childs, politically attuned Dylan, various other very smart people...people who didn't need something like Gamergate to wake them up to issues of ethics in journalism.

I've been needing to update my signature. Thanks, guys!

This would probably merit a separate thread. If there's interest, I'll start one. My point here is more that a tool like this would need to strike a balance between being informative but too overwhelming (trawling the Microscope, Yearbook, 80's Project threads, etc.), and being succinct but lacking information (numerical rating, yes/no, sliding scale). The amount of information that gets boiled down in your average well-written Gordy List seems about right to me.

Efficient, sure, but are they effective? And are there no options beyond a single number and the entire body of written work that exists on a given wrestler? Something along the lines of a Gordy List, perhaps?

There's no better sellers in history? There's five of them. You're telling me they're all not only perfect, but identically perfect, to the point that you can effectively summarize all five of them with the same single number? I'm saying they are about on par. 20 doesn't mean "perfect", it means "best in the world". I've been playing Football Manager since 1995 so maybe this makes more sense to me than some, or people are being deliberately obtuse. Either way, 20 more soon. Okay, so they are identically "best in the world", to the point that you can effectively summarize all five of them with the same single number? This makes perfect sense in the context of a game, where you need numbers to crunch in order to make things happen, but this is real life, and we're not robots. Honestly, I do find the idea of a tool like this for aggregating analysis about wrestlers and comparing them against each other interesting and potentially useful for a project such as this one. But I have no use for star ratings, and even less use for the numerical ratings here. It has to be backed by something more.

I don't think the things that led Gamergate to blow up and the things that led this to blow up are the same things.

It was partly, only my hope was that the numbers wouldn't be seen as "silly and arbitrary". For example, I've rated Flair, Steamboat, Brisco, Race and Martel at 20 for selling which is saying that there are no better sellers than those in wrestling history. Agree? Yes? No? There's no better sellers in history? There's five of them. You're telling me they're all not only perfect, but identically perfect, to the point that you can effectively summarize all five of them with the same single number?

The day that I start viewing wrestling this way is the day I stop being a fan. I suppose there's some merit here as a tool for comparing wrestlers, but I'm not sure how much numerical rankings tell us.

Did...did I see a PPV main event end with a wrestler getting defeated by faulty wiring? Is Dean Ambrose being stalked by the same Phantom of the Opera that tried to kill Vince at the 2008 WWE Draft? Because that could be kinda hilarious. Ambrose is the kind of guy I could see making a feud with a person whose existence is only even suggested by scenery falling apart entertaining. I mean, it would be a huge waste of him, and this was phenomenally stupid regardless, but he seems like he could make that fun.