Johnny Sorrow

The Jesus stuff from the crowd during Saxton vs Gradwell was legit fantastic. "Hey, Jesus..Ooh! Ahh! I wanna knooooow...will you be my God" 👍 Tremendous.

It's hilarious hearing Nigel being awesome on commentary after years of ROH Nigel where he clearly was hating life.

I like to think that Paul loved the midgets so much he booked on the fly and added them to the Casey/ Mansfield match. 😄

Woo hoo, Houston, we have midgets. 😎

I like that Jericho has gotten to do the two things he wanted to do since he was a kid, be a wrestler and be in a band. I think that's cool. And maybe it's an age thing, but as a 46 year old American, Motörhead was totally a band everyone was aware of.

Cool idea, man. And I love the name.

Fuck that. I want more of The Big 'Un.

Jesus Christ, SmackDown this week was fucking awesome. And since I had just read that Road Dogg and possibly Scott are major parts of the booking/ writing team, I was totally feeling and picking up on the huge Southern Armstrong style through a modern production prism that this week's show had.

Yeah but all the eighties guys were characters. I myself didn't know any Ugandan warriors, devil worshipers, or Kings. Maybe i was running with a different crowd. Miz has been exactly that recently. Especially on Talking Smack, where actually a lot of the guys and gals have been cutting great promos.

He isn't really a "callup". He was already lead writer of Smackdown before he went to NXT in 2014, and I don't remember Smackdown being so good at the time. Well, SD wasn't its own show then. It was RAW lite.

Oh, and is Robert Blake dead? Cause he'd be a recurring character. Like Greico on Jump Street.

I'm picturing a TV show where OJ and Snuka are Private Eyes solving cases, while eternally searching for the "real killers." And they live on a boat, like Riptide. And their maid is the robot from Rocky 4. And now I'm bummed it's not real.

That Abby stuff was fucking awesome. JJ was fucking amazing. I'm so used to basically kinda boring JJ from the Horsemen era, which was what it was supposed to be, that seeing and hearing a young and at times maniacal JJ is so cool. His big blonde stache and sideburns...the cigar.. fucking great.

So, when Gary Young tries to shake hands with Wahoo and Wahoo refuses, Paul says "Wahoo, as an Indian, has the right not to trust the White Man." That's fucking tremendous. 😄

That triple threat on SmackDown was fucking awesome on every level.

Will turned me onto him some years back and I thought he was awesome. 2016 strikes again.

The same applies to european wrestling. European wrestling never received any of the awards you are talking about there. I also just looked over the last 2 pages of the ***** / **** 3/4 matches thread and there were only 2 or 3 matches from europe there compared to almost everyone having matches from mexico in their list. In fact, lucha is much better represented than WoS or CWA. On the 90s yearbooks, there were only a handful of european matches but dozens of mexican ones. Actually there is near zero discussion on 90s european wrestling. Jim Breaks, probably the most beloved WoS worker, didn't even make the Top 50 in the GWE, while the two top rated brit guys all worked extensively in the US and japan. OJ has written a lot about it on this site but there's not much more discussion than that compared to the endless talking about lucha. Otto Wanz vs. Vader is almost never mentioned as one of the best feuds of the 80s. Wanz and many other deserving euro workers still are' in the WON Hall of Fame. Could it be? Are people not giving european wresting a fair shake? Is there something going on? Do I need to ignore people who praise 90s AJPW and El Dandy but don't even know the likes of Mile Zrno or Alan Kilby? Did the british not import enough US cultural hegemony? Is Meltz a US imperialist? Or could it be that people largely just don't like it/don't feel inspired to get really into it? Nah, it just sucks. 😄

And the love for "real sports" feel is totally based on tapping into those amazing feelings you had when you were a kid and you thought wrestling was real. I'm like Barbra in "Prince Of Tides".

That's an interesting take. I'm not trying to imply it's racism. I think what it comes down to is coverage and the people who run wrestling narratives (Meltzer) almost ignoring it. And a base reason for that is the fact that those people probably felt the way I described. I mean, Meltzer's love of MMA is totally based on "real sports". "It's just like wrestling, but it's real."

Grimmy Poo, I'm getting the vibe that you may be implying there's a racial thing going on, and I don't think that's it at all. To put it simply, I think that maybe the answer to your original question has to do with "real sports". (I'm speaking in huge generalizations here, so take that into account. ) A LOT of people I've talked to over the years initially got into Japanese wrestling because of the "real sports" deal. I remember lots of "It's like a real sport over there" or " The fans treat it seriously over there." talk amongst people who were first getting into it. And since lots of fans have a bit of an inferiority complex about wrestling generally being considered stupid in most places, certainly in America , I can see the appeal of getting into "serious " and "realistic" wrestling. Whereas Lucha at first viewing has tumbling heroes and villains in masks and costumes. And of course upon close examination you can find all kinds of wrestling in both cultures, I think a lot of the reasons behind your initial query are boiled down to what I was saying above. So, I think that maybe that's part of the answer to your original question.

But that's not a monopoly. Offering people more money and a larger stage is just how entertainment works.

And I seriously doubt Del Rio would give a fuck.

Again, sorry if I came off dickish there. Let's put it aside and marvel over Paul Boesch plugging the exotic pet store they got the Sheiks snake from.

Sam Roberts is doing a great job. He's totally diving into the role instead of being just an outsider who's happy to be there. Which isn't a surprise given that he's a lifelong fan.

I think all the video production and promotion of Sasha/ Charlotte has been fantastic.