S.L.L.

Why do you think he was pushed as a main event star after '04 or so? I think it wasn't entirely due to his amateur background reassuring carnies, but I think it gave him a definite boost that wrestlers of comparable or even better value did not have. I think decision-makers in WWE and TNA genuinely thought he was a great worker who was consistently over. You may think that other wrestlers would have done as well or better in his position from a work and/or drawing standpoint, and you may be right. But it's not like promoters and bookers are infallible judges of quality. Very true. I would, however, argue that they are not arbitrary judges of quality. What do you think motivated their judgement? I distinctly remember a ton of fawning over his work in and around the industry from very early in his run and continuing well after he stopped having any demonstrated value beyond being a name guy. Where did that come from? Again, I'm not saying he did nothing to earn it on his own, but am I really supposed to believe that it was pure coincidence that the guy who got this treatment was an Olympic gold medalist, that that only served to "help him get his foot in the door"?

Why do you think he was pushed as a main event star after '04 or so? I think it wasn't entirely due to his amateur background reassuring carnies, but I think it gave him a definite boost that wrestlers of comparable or even better value did not have.

I think you're confused. Loss said... I said... No one is making the claim that athletic credentials alone lead to stardom. Loss claims the opposite, and I agree with him. I'm saying there are other reasons guys with legit athletic background appeal to wrestling promoters.

Except wrestling is still run by insecure carnies. Don't forget the lessons of Kurt Angle: a guy with legit athletic credentials can survive and thrive well past his sell-by date if his presence reassures insecure carnies about their own authenticity.

Well, yes, the baggage is attached to it now. It wasn't when he signed up three months ago. I'm guessing that's what the rationale was. Fat lot of good it does him now, but I personally will extend him the low-level message board courtesy of letting him have his second chance until he gives me reason to start accusing him of being a sexual predator again. I don't think that's an unreasonable stance to take.

I don't wanna harp on it too much, because I really dug the match (and the show as a whole, for that matter...I don't know why I keep shelling out money for Mania when Extreme Rules is consistently the better and more meaningful show), but I actually was bugged by the finish to Cena/Ryback. Is there some reason Lil' Naitch couldn't count both guys down before/during medical personnel arriving on the scene? Because he didn't, and without that, the match just sort of ends. Why does this fall outside standard last man standing match protocol? Why do they have to stop the match because the wrestlers can't continue when the whole point of the gimmick is that the wrestlers beat each other until they can't continue? It's like stopping a cage match because of the sudden realization that you're surrounded by chain-link fence. This is what they signed up for. Make the fucking count. Also without the count, it's pretty clear Ryback got fucked over, because he was the last man standing. With assistance, yes, but standing nonetheless. Wouldn't be surprised if that gets worked into the angle, though, so I'm not gonna get too bent out of shape over it. Again, terrific match, and it's probably a petty detail to complain about, but that really did bug me anyway. I actually liked Brock/HHH even less than their Mania match, however I chalk that up to my inability to see it as anything other than HHH's self-insert fanfic about how he made the big, scary UFC fighter his bitch inside of a cage. And also because I liked it a lot better the first time I saw it, when it was called "Brock vs. Cena at Extreme Rules 2012", the role HHH was being played by Lesnar, the role of Lesnar was being played by Cena, and the one-hit kill that gets the win for the guy who got the shit kicked out of him all match actually felt like a one-hit kill.

Probably not. Though, to be entirely fair, "ResidentEvil" was never trying to go incognito. He just needed to disassociate from the "WildPegasus" name after Benoit killed his family, and that was what he came up with. "TheGreatPuma" seemed to be hoping we wouldn't notice who he was, which at least suggests enough self-awareness to know that who he was was someone nobody would want to be associated with. Hope for the best, be ready for the worst, I say. P.S. Remember this a few months from now when people are accusing me of cyber-bullying him again

Til he gets outed, of course. Well, yes. An identity is more than just a name, after all. Changing RE's identity proper would also means not acting like RE. Considering he went over three months without detection...that's a somewhat promising sign. That said, it's all out the window now, but I, at least, will continue to honor his unspoken request to be seen as a new man, at least until he starts acting the bastard child of Max Cady and John Yiamouyiannis again.

Did Cham Pain get fat?

Unless I missed something, you were never banned. Pretending to be a different person seems unnecessary. As someone who spent more than a little free time poking RE with a stick over the internet, I think it was smart. "Resident Evil" was a name that carried a lot of baggage with it. Taking on a new identity frees him of that and lets him get a fresh start.

I think that's kinda the case with a lot of these. Few of these gimmicks are inherently bad, it's just that a lot of wrestlers struggle to make the most of them. Like, Dundee/Koko showed me there's actually a ton of cool stuff you can do with a scaffold match, but how many wrestlers are as comfortable on a scaffold as Dundee and Koko are? The lumberjack match is another good one that hasn't been mentioned yet. Again, not an inherently bad gimmick, and matches like the first Von Erichs/Freebirds six-man proved that it can be used to a match's advantage. But a lot of wrestlers struggle to do that, and it instead becomes limiting.

Hiroshi Tanahashi is obviously charismatic. I guess the fact that I think he blows can be chalked up to my inability to pick up the social cues he's delivering in his matches. Obviously.

I'm giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you just don't know better, but Asperger's Syndrome doesn't make it impossible to do those things, it makes it harder to do those things. I express concern for people around me all the time, and I still have plenty of moments that serve as a dead giveaway to my condition (especially online, when all our worst attributes tend to get pushed to the forefront). If Dave has it - and he's always read like a guy who has it, though I don't think that really proves anything in and of itself - he's clearly learned how to cope with it well enough to function in society, but being able to do that doesn't mean you can't have it.

So, yes, it's a non-sequitur and just shitty writing. Darn.

So.... ....the italicized part of the post and the bolded part of the post have no connection to each other? The comment about Dave is a complete non-sequitur that you just happened to toss in after talking about people "pretending" to be real journalists and whatnot? Because that's shitty writing. If you're gonna critcize other people's shitty writing, you should probably at least be able to identify your own. Unless you meant it as some kind of satire of bad wrestling writers, and it just went over my head. Did you mean it as satire? Because that kind of clumsy failure to communicate an idea is actually not out of place in Meltzer's writing. And you do seem to have a Tommy Wisseau parody retcon gimmick going on. Hmmmm. I'll need to give this more thought.

To be fair, both of those things are true. It's kinda hard to detect JR's excitement these days without an audio track.

I think it was more the way it looked than that it was a Taker superhero spot. Like, him powering up from the Anaconda Vice and glaring at Punk...that looked like a Taker superhero spot. That was actually pretty neat. GTS -> bounce off the ropes -> Tombstone just looked silly. However.... ....while that's not what it looked like to me, I can see how it would look like that to someone else. So if you saw that, cool. I won't argue against that. So I made the comparison of Mania to the first Russo/Bischoff Nitro. First Russo/Bischoff Nitro is a show that doesn't work for a lot of reasons, but the one that Phil harped on the most in his Workrate Report and that usually gets brought up when talking about it now was that every segment ran the same formula. Somebody comes out for a match or an interview, somebody else comes out to interrupt with a big surprise, repeat until show ends. Same formula, every segment, all night, and in doing so, they make the formula meaningless. That said, while they kept running the same formula, it wasn't run in a completely identical manner. Some big surprises interrupted matches. Some big surprises interrupted bad worked shoot promos. Some involved guys already in the company making the interruptions. Some involved guys making their debuts. Some involved guys attacking wrestlers. Some involved guys attacking announcers. There were obvious differences in how they ran the "somebody comes out for a match or an interview, somebody else comes out to interrupt with a big surprise" formula in each segment...but they still ran the "somebody comes out for a match or an interview, somebody else comes out to interrupt with a big surprise" formula in each segment, which killed any real interest you might have had in it. I recognize obvious differences between how all the Mania matches from Jericho/Fandago through the main event ran the "meaningless opening and then finishers" formula. Some of the matches had guys doing throws for the meaningless opening. Some had guys doing strikes for the meaningless opening. Some had Punk rolling the urn around on his arms like some morbid version of Curly Neal for the meaningless opening. Some had finishers done onto tables. Some had finishers done onto steel steps. Some had guys doing their opponents' finishers, and some were content to stick with their own. So, yes, those matches all ran the "meaningless opening and then finishers" formula differently from one another...but they still all ran the "meaningless opening and then finishers" formula, which killed any real interest I might have had in it. I'm willing to agree that Punk/Taker was the best of those matches on the grounds that it made the most of the formula. I'm willing to agree HHH/Lesnar was the least of those matches because it had the most problems on top of running the same match formula they were running all night. But convincing me that these matches were structured in any kind of meaningfully different manner from each other is gonna be a tough sell.

I'm getting the weirdest feeling of deja vu from that letter: http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?show...073&hl=cena

Weird. Weird, weird, weird. So the short of it is that I thought that may have been the worst WrestleMania I've ever watched in full, but that doesn't really tell the whole story, because how it got to be that bad really caught me off-guard. Namely, it was a terrible show despite the fact that, while most of the matches were bad, none of them struck me as audaciously bad. HHH/Lesnar came the closest to doing that, but even then, I never wanted to claw my eyes out the way I did during HHH/Taker last year. Basically, I just kept flashing back to Phil's Workrate Report of the first Russo/Bischoff Nitro, where the big takeaway was that one of the best ways to fuck up a show is to have every segment be exactly the same. Reading through this thread, it's weird to see things like people praising Taker/Punk and bashing HHH/Lesnar, not because it's wrong to see either of those matches as good or bad, but because they really weren't distinct enough to warrant thinking one was meaningfully better than the other. They were basically the same match, as was pretty every other match on the show from Jericho/Fandango onwards...which is to say that they were basically all HHH matches. Meaningless opening stuff, and then straight into nine billion finishers that get kicked out of to create the illusion of an all-time classic without the hard work and effort of actually having an all-time classic. This was probably Davey Richards' favorite Mania ever. First half of the show wasn't great, either, though it wasn't terrible. Miz/Barrett was a passable match with a neat finish. Shield match was the least of the Shield matches and felt like a waste of the Show, but was basically fine. Ryback/Henry was the wrong match for those two to have. Finish was neat, but I don't see what putting Henry over accomplishes if he's just gonna get Shellshocked right afterwords anyway. Tag match felt like the best thing on the show, in that it was the one match I have no real complaints about. As a guy who's been following his career since '01, the visual of Bryan leading a Mania crowd in Yes/No chants was very nice to see, especially in light of how badly they fucked him over last year. If anything saves this from actually being the worst Mania I've ever seen, that match was probably it. Then Fandango had this awesome entrance...and it was all downhill from there. It's really weird that anarchistxx is complaining about them not protecting Jericho here, because he was dominating this match in a way you don't normally see in high-profile debut matches. Those are usually booked to put the focus on the new guy and all the stuff he brings to the table, but Jericho took pretty much the whole match until Finisherpalooza Part 1 kicked in. I guess some people really do just judge how protected a guy is based on wins and losses. Honestly, if I had never seen a Johnny Curtis match before, I'd have thought the only move he had besides his finishers was a rear chinlock. Then again, when the first thing you do after getting eaten alive by Jericho all match is to sink in a resthold, maybe I shouldn't be complaining that you're not getting enough opportunities to show off your offense. Also, if you're gonna give someone a dancer gimmick, you should probably make sure they can dance first. Again, nice entrance where he was surrounded by other better dancers, but looked awkward as hell when left on his own. I really wanted to like Fandango, because Curtis always struck me as a very competent worker who didn't have a ton of innate charisma and would've benefited from this kind of gimmick, but they might have to go back to the drawing board on this one. I liked Del Rio stomping Zeb's hand. Zeb's reaction to Swagger losing was great, too. Otherwise, the match was memorable only in that it was the exact same match I had just seen and would see again three more times before the night was over. I guess Taker/Punk was the best version of the one match that was playing on an endless loop all night, but that's about all I can say for it. Taker eating the GTS and then bouncing off of the ropes and hitting the Tombstone on the way back looked like something someone would make an animated gif of and that we'd all laugh at if it happened in an ROH main event. If I'm comparing this show to the first Russo/Bischoff Nitro, then HHH/Lesnar would be Tank Abbott ripping off Mark Madden's shirt, in that it was the most glaring and obvious "fuck you" to anyone who was actually watching the show. But beyond that, I can't really say that something that's essentially the same as everything surrounding it is appreciably worse than everything surrounding it. Rock/Cena probably wasn't the best or worst version of the one match they ran fifty times last night, but it was the most egregious case of it. You could have taken all the individual spots in that match, rearranged them in random order, and replayed it for me, and I doubt I would've been able to tell you the difference. Like I said, there was nothing as painful as Taker/HHH last year, but in some ways, this is worse. Because watching that, I felt like I was seeing HHH's vision of what wrestling should be applied to one match. This felt like HHH's vision of what wrestling should be applied to the whole card. And as the Vince years wind down and HHH prepares to take over, if this is what the future holds, I want no part of it.

Very good show, as per usual. Funny you mention Lesnar taking out Punk as a way to write him off TV for a while post-Mania. A few weeks ago, when I was swamped at work, I spent a lot of my down time fantasy booking Mania, and I was actually thinking that was what they should've done before Mania. Heyman gets fed up with Punk losing/barely scraping by high-profile match after high-profile match, throws his support entirely behind Brock, and sics him on Punk. Then Punk makes the valiant comeback, and you run Punk/Lesnar at Mania with Heyman handcuffed to HHH at ringside (so that he can feel like he's still important), and use that to start Punk on the road to recovery.

On the contrary, Henry/Ryback is one of the few matches I'm actually looking forward to on Saturday. Henry/Ryback may be the only match I'm looking forward to this Sunday. Most of the rest of the card seems designed specifically to piss me off.

Aside from what jdw said, it's not like Dave only watched WWF up until that point, either. He had exposure to a wide range of stuff, including wrestling that was far more moves-heavy than Shawn's work ever was.

Damn right I am. Declaring victory when you're on the losing end of an argument and then running away is a bitch move. Why shouldn't he get shit over it? Personally, I'm hoping jdw finishes the job. I just wanted to keep Jerry in play long enough for that to happen. I can't draw you back. That would require you to not still be in it. And I think Jim Varney is a misunderstood comic genius. Doesn't mean other people are gonna see it that way. Which means very little to me if YOU can't back up your claims yourself. The argument was "does poor quality product cause people to stop following said product". For this argument to even happen, there has to be basic agreement between both sides as to what is meant by the term "quality". Not only was that not the case here, you knew it was not the case, are saying exactly that to me, and yet still declare some sort of victory. There are a few possibilities here. One is that you are really, really, really dumb. Like "I'm not sure we should be letting this guy outside without a helmet" dumb. If jdw says that products fail due to poor quality as he defines it, and you note that products of of poor quality succeed using a completely different definition of the term, how does that prove anything about jdw's claim, or about the idea in general? You're a doctor of English. Why am I having to explain this to you? Are degrees really that meaningless in the 21st century that any bozo off the street can be a doctor of English? Or are you actually as smart as one would think you are...in which case you are being massively dishonest. Maybe not knowingly dishonest, but if you're smart enough that you should see the holes in your argument but mysteriously don't, and then run away (kinda) when there's too much scrutiny from others, I can't help but see an act of deception. This.... Except for here, where apparently no one knows more about wrestling than you do. Or the thread about the roster depth in 80's WWF vs 80's Crockett, where no one knew more about wrestling than you do. Or all those misguided souls who still don't get that the in-ring part of wrestling isn't an especially big deal. If I have to ask twice, it probably means you don't want other people to know the answer, but...do you still believe that? jdw - amongst others - speak down to you because you're an impossibly thick, arrogant, know-nothing know-it-all who refuses to so much as consider the possibility that you might actually be wrong about something, even with overwhelming evidence against you. It seems like every other thread you're in - including this one - starts out with people - including jdw - politely explaining things to you, but the second it starts to sound like your idea might be wrong, you go on the defensive. "Oh, but obviously I'm only doing that because I think I'm right." But you're not always right. And you are sometimes very obviously wrong. And you are frequently unwilling/unable to recognize when you are very obviously wrong. And you treat everyone like idiots who need to learn from your superior wisdom regardless of whether or not what you are saying has even the slightest hint of validity. And that makes you come off as an overbearing, pompous douchebag. Speaking from personal experience, you can't be a overbearing, pompous douchebag and not expect others to talk down to you. He didn't. Does he need to take a specific shot at me for me to point out that he's being an idiot? Honestly, I would've gotten involved sooner but.... A. jdw, Dylan, Johnny and others had it pretty well covered B. I actually have been trying to dial back the angry rhetoric a bit lately. Even I was getting a little tired of it. All the same, me stepping back didn't really change anything. I mean, if Jerry says something stupid in the woods, and I'm not around to make fun of it, it's still stupid. More to the point, other, frankly more qualified individuals kept pointing out how stupid he's being. So if Jerry is going to keep riling people up with his idiocy independently of my presence, I don't see how my piling on makes things worse.

Are you shitting me, Jerry? You're the guy who was arguing this.... ....while simultaneously arguing this.... These arguments are mutually exclusive. When Dylan asked, "what do you mean by 'quality'", you told him one thing, after having told jdw something entirely different. And then you actually reaffirmed the point you made to jdw, as though he couldn't read what you had written to Dylan earlier that day. jdw said you "got lost", but I can't help but wonder if he's giving you too much credit in assuming that. The extent to which your argument is clear is that you think you're right and that anyone who disagrees with you is wrong. Somewhat funny, seeing as how.... Do you still believe that, Jerry?

I know we're mostly looking at wrestlers here, but I had this thought the other night while talking about Paul Bearer....did anyone ever really like Brother Love? Because I thought he always sucked, and he was onscreen on and off seemingly forever.