Ryan Faulconer

I thought this would be a good topic for discussion. With WWE's ridiculous number of multi-generational stars this is probably a tougher debate than it was ten or fifteen years ago. I'm not sure how many members a family needs to have in order to be the true first family of wrestling. There are a number of families that only go as far as parent/offspring (you gotta keep em separated???) but that might be enough for some fans. The Hart Family seems to have been taken down a few pegs over the last decade. Bret/Owen/Davey/TJ/Dynamite/Teddy/Anvil/Natalya has a good top three with number four being wildly bipolar as far as an online consensus goes. Is there another to challenge the Samoans or the Brazos? The Von Erichs are definitely a good kayfabe choice but I'm not sure how well they stack up after Kerry and Kevin. I guess they fall into the Hart family category with time not being so kind when defining the "first family" of wrestling. The Rhodes family probably deserves a mention although they seem to only run three deep. Maybe the Windhams or Armstrongs or Fullers fall into the discussion. Then there is the Piratas and Parkas. I'd also pick the Hamadas and a lot of other lucha families like Negro Navarro's...and we could probably have a good discussion just rattling off lucha familias. Now that I think about it I'm probably in over my head on this one. I feel like I'm missing out on some obvious examples. The board can probably some fun with this one.

Are there any good podcasts on the WON/F4W archives talking about lucha? I just ordered a one month sub to check out the archives. Dave's old AAA reports read like someone explaining a foreign language to someone else who is illiterate in their native language. Good times.

I thought my original thought got a little off topic in the WWE thread. Thanks for moving it here. I remember reading backlash against the Smackdown 6 era stuff before Angle left WWE and before the obvious repulsion towards all things Benoit in 2007. I mainly made the comment to compare it to the current crop of good matches on WWE TV. Its the law diminishing returns and all that comes with it. It was definitely tied in with the DVDVR corner of the internet tiring of Angle. The only criticisms Benoit would usually get before June 2007 would be about his promos. Even those were getting a little better throughout his WWE years. Goldust in 2013 is a lot more fun and engaging to watch.

He can't talk. He looks like he should be the Wyatt Family's straight laced workaholic cousin from the city. That's the only gimmick he could do in WWE. Put a mask and a bodysuit and mute him completely and they could have something though. His gimmick and name should be City Mouse. On the indies he is perfect. He can work off of his reputation and wouldn't need any other credentials or gimmicks to make it work again. He was great from 2001-2006 in that setting.

Not to make excuses for the guy but...does anyone sell injuries for more than a few minutes in today's "feed me more" (ha!) pro wrestling climate? I used to notice Benoit being one of the only guys who would sell while on offense. I always cringe when DB does the headbutt or the tope suicida to nowhere. WWE guys need to stop doing the step collision spot. That probably doesn't help all these shoulder and arm injuries or tears that guys are getting. Does anyone think the Bryan/Shield/Rhodeses/others will be looked back on with the same ambivilence that the "Smackdown Six" suffered from a few years after the fact? There are all these good/great/excellent television matches this year that are getting plenty of praise. Back in 2002 the quality was also there but nowadays fans seem to think of it as "just wrestling" or a failed Heyman project. They really have a lot more supporting players to keep things fresh(er) this time around. Outside of a divas' or Great Khali match there are really strong matches up and down the card on regular TV. That's probably not good for PPV...but I don't watch the PPVs so fuck them!

The only thing I saw last night was the main event's last ten minutes or so. It was awesome. The finish was great even though I actually feel invested in the outcome of Daniel Bryan matches. Was it just me or did Orton get no reaction at all posing with the belts as the show ended? I ordered a couple of the ROH Danielson comps with the black friday sale. I had some of that stuff on VHS but that batch disappeared sometime between back surgeries (twice) and moving (twice). I also ordered the Punk title run DVD because I missed it completely when it happened in ROH. I'm not as much of a fan of his as I am of Danmerican Dragbryanson but it sounded like something I should see and enjoy. Is the Ryback thread at DVDVR made up of the same two people with multiple accounts? I wish I could turn back the sands of time on that one. He wouldn't even be the best member of Da Baldies stable...and they would be believable shouting "FEED ME MORE!"

Wasn't Angle rushed into the WON HOF on rep and what-could-have-been sentimentality? I seem to remember voters/gawkers pushed him in because 2004 was thought to have been his last year. He had some serious(er) neck problem that turned a lot of what-ifs??? into credible evidence of his awesomeness. Being a gold medalist in wrestling and being better than average as a professional probably made ding ding ding JACKPOT!!! signs go off in the eyes of some voters. They couldn't wait for him to be eligible. It was like that horrible countdown that was online years ago that ticked down the days until the Olsen Twins were legal. The wrestling example is not as creepy but it was annoying nonetheless.

Katsuhiko Nakajima was 15 or 16 when he debuted for Choshu's World Pro or whatever it was called. Gran Naniwa was at most 16 when he debuted IIRC. There are probably many female Japanese wrestlers that debuted in their mid-teens. Lucha probably has too many to count. Didn't Harry Smith debut really young as well? Maybe TJ Wilson/Tyson Kidd too.

Kurt Angle is a hell of a drug.

I'm late to the party here so forgive me if I've missed a couple of these points. When I first read about Sasaki online back in 1998-99 people either called him lazy or Kensucky or ripped on him for marrying and ruining whatever fantasy they had about Akira Hokuto. I enjoyed his reinvention/reinvigoration over the next few years a lot and most people over at the DVDVRMB seemed to appreciate his improvement. He also received a whole new level of appreciation from the Dragon Gate fans when he joined the Florida Brothers and did a bunch of comedy stuff there. I thought it was pretty forced and not as good as the TARU/Stalker stuff...so there's that against him. I really enjoyed his slugfest matches but he wasn't on the level of Tenryu or Takayama or Kawada or whoever he usually matched up against in that style. I don't think he could have had exciting matches like those without his opponent bringing most of the interest from the crowd heat. There might be a HHH comparison somewhere to be found with Sasaki but I don't want to talk about HHH

Awwww man...I just started buying off of iTunes instead of Amazon last year. Probably 90% of the music on my iPod came from my CD collection before I started buying mp3s direct from iTunes. I feel too young to be middle aged. I guess the fact that I actually pay for my music makes me stand out as being middle aged to start with though. Pitbull is RVD.

Maybe it is my terrible terrible eye sight but I couldn't find any way to listen to the show on iTunes. I would be on that show like Super Porky and his sandwich if I could listen to it that way.

After reading about Lesnar here recently I went onto Netflix to see which Lesnar matches I could watch. I finally saw the Lesnar/Taker HIAC. It was soooo much better than the first one with HBK/Taker. I mean...this match had so many interesting touches that I never would have thought a WWE cage match would have. I was also convinced (for some reason) that they would end up on top of the cell and they didn't even try to tease it! I was looking at the walls of the cell for weak spots and I was convinced that the side Heyman was on with the arm-sized holes would be their ticket out of the cage. Thankfully it was not! I haven't seen a WWE PPV in years aside from the matches on assorted DVD releases. This match looked like something from a bygone era of wrestling. The camera work was pretty different and much less nauseating back then as well. The only spot that didn't make a lot of sense was the nearfall that Lesnar broke up by grabbing the bottom rope. This happened after they had said earlier that it was falls count anywhere and even had a couple of pins on the floor to show for it. I actually thought the first pin on the floor was a brain cramp on their fault and the referee and announcers just went along with it for the reat of the match. Is there anything on the level of the Taker/Lesnar HIAC from WWE the last six or so years? I get that there won't be blood now but there is no reason that they can't reach the same level of violence with so many good/better workers now.

The first thing they would do is change his name. He wouldn't be "Sting" anymore.

From the moment he came out to his music Hector Garza "worked" like a star. He could be both smarmy and charmy at the same time. He knew how to work the crowd on the way to the ring, during his parts of the matches and even when he wasn't featured in action. He could also "bring it" as the kids say with the workrate and the highspots and the bumping for phantom low blows. His time in CMLL from 2004-2006 was always a treat to watch. I'd recommend LuchaWorld #19 podcast to anyone interested in a nice retrospective tribute.

I was interested in lucha from watching bits of Telelatino blocks back in the mid 90s so I might not be the average fan reading about wrestling for the first time online. Scott Keith alone (at least back in 1997) is not harmful to your health. I wouldn't touch his opinions on most wrestling unrelated to Bret Hart with a pole on a pole match after 2001. At that time he was less harmful and more of catchphrase machine. I think there might be something to be said for being a tape buyer/trader because we were literally invested in our interests back then. A lot of today's breed of fan can float from site to site sampling matches and not giving anything that doesn't blow their mind right away a second thought, let alone a second viewing. El Dandy has an uphill battle for sure. I started out reading Scott Keith's rants a long time ago on RSPW when I began reading about wrestling on the net. I also started reading into that DVDVR bunch back when they were one person who made a typo in a workrate report which bequeathed the eventual juggernaut. Then when I realized that the old green/red forum didn't have all the answers I wanted I read stuff like the Quebrada and listened to Meltzer's old Eyada show (which was supposedly the future of communication online...only before it had a name and iPods existed) who pimped stuff like Atlantis vs Villano III among other things. There was a young pot banger/Survival Tobita sympathizer who called in from time to time as well, IMSMR. I got some good tips on women's wrestling from people like Ohtani's Jacket and friends too but that was harder to stay interested in when lucha is so plentiful and bountiful and whatnot year in and year out...pretty much every single year...except for a little while in 2003 when it got a little lean and the only connections we had were Samurai TV lucha broadcasts. Still, bad lucha for me is better than bad pizza. All those Pierroths would sure test my patience whenever they leaned a little heavy on the boricuas for awhile. So...grain of sand and my interest in wrestling is a beach, or so the saying goes. As someone who first read about the luchadores in Scott Keith's rants/reviews I'd like to think that anyone could follow a similar route. If the world of facebook and/or youtube is any indication I'd probably be wrong though.

Gabe always said that Danielson was the one who came up with the EVOLVE concept. Some people might think less of him for that, maybe. He is almost bullet proof in WWE. No angle can hurt him. Most of the goofier stuff only serves to make him a stronger character and building block for the promotion. His change in 2005/2006 made him so much more charismatic and engaging with the audience. Prior to that he was the still one of the best match in and match out. He was very over wherever he went on the indies but he was closer to Chris Benoit's personality and charisma level at that point. Since then he leaped up to show more of a Chris Jericho-like presence and personality. He was developing into a pretty good promo on the indies in 2006-2007 that often gets overlooked. When he went to WWE the only thing I thought would hold him back was his height. By the time he got to television his size wasn't an issue at all, which was nice to see. The only thing misstep during the last ten years or so was the overly-contrived 80something minute match that he had with Austin Aries in 2004. Bryan's had some excellent longer matches but that match just seemed like an awkward fantasy booking wet dream. Some fans believed that the concept alone made him (and Aries) look like better wrestlers. It did not. He's up there with Rey and L.A. Park for the best of the decade, IMO. Well...he's probably better than L.A. Park but those three are my three faves in this century so far.

Konnan was much better in Mexico than he was in WCW/TNA. He was bigger than a lot of luchadores and the "Konnan el Barbario" gimmick worked over there. He was too small to work the same gimmick in the US. He had plenty of decent to good matches before he became the catchphrase machine in the Wolfpac.

Martel had at least one match with The Natural (Don Callis/Cyrus) in IWA Winnipeg that I remember being pretty good. It was from 1996 so it pre-dates the 1998 comeback which was a I surprise to me. For some reason they aired IWA Winnipeg/WFWA shows for several months back in 2000-2002 here in Thunder Bay. The best stuff was Callis doing commentary over Jericho/Benoit and Liger/Ultimo from Super J Cup 95 and a Gedo/Jericho(IIRC) match from WAR. Callis vs Jim Brunzel in what looked like a parking lot show was really good too.

Cabana played a different version of himself in the friendship/feud with Jimmy Jacobs and Lacey and in most of his feuds over the past decade. He always had great brawls with Homicide, Pearce, Prophecy, Jacobs, Steen, Corino or whoever else. They are all better than average brawlers so maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe Cabana just knows how to work that kind of match in addition to the role that he seems pigeonholed in. I think it is only over the past year that Cabana hasn't put out one or many crazy brawls/street fights. If it happened more recently (2012-13) then it stands in his favour that much more as someone more versatile than a guy who supposedly just wants to do comedy and collect his cheque. Santino is not what I consider to be funny so I can't really make any arguments for his case. This is a thread about Colt Cabana anyway. .

It sounds like New Japan is receiving the same kind of endorsement that ROH and Dragon Gate USA used to get from the WON. Meltzer gets enthusiastic about a promotion and it gets a higher profile online among the english speaking wrestling fans. There is also a community atmosphere with New Japan streaming iPPVs that I'm sure accounts for a lot of the buzz. The shows wouldn't get a fraction of the reaction if they weren't live. Heck, look at the difference in the size of threads at DVDVR for the taped WWE RAW/Smackdown and when they are live. New Japan (and most of the promotions around the world) are available somewhere online but it is just this past year that the largest company in Japan has been airing live iPPVs. I don't think it is a coincidence.

Definitely. If WWE ran my iPod every song would not only have the same structure but also have the same volume, musical arrangement and every vocal would be sung at the same key by an unidentifiable androgynous singer. There is no point in using "shuffle" at all. I feel that way when I listen to too many songs that are produced by the same person. Even though I like the Wall of Sound or Motown style I can really ruin those songs for my ears when I sense too much of a pattern. I can listen to most of the Phil Spector Back to Mono anthology over a certain period that allows me to hear the sixty songs on the compilation. The comparison falls apart when I can't see myself watching sixty WWE tag matches or TV matches that arc over a commercial break. Then again I can gladly sit through a similarly sized batch of a favourite wrestler of mine, or lucha from one period or another or a promotion and/or period of time in wrestling that I would call a favourite of mine. Sometime in 2006 I gave up on watching all the CMLL I could get my hands on. Their formula became a lot tighter and predictable. Commercial breaks during a seven minute three fall match annoyed me just as much as when WWE does it. Its like the song always says... What might be right for you, may not be right for some. It takes diff'rent strokes to rule the world...or something. WWE rules the world of televised wrestling though.

The spots in singles and tag matches that telegraph commercial breaks are what annoys me the most about their formula. You can usually see it coming five moves ahead of time. The announcers saying the exact same thing to telegraph the telegraphed sequence before the break are super duper annoying. It is the type of production that a five year old probably sees coming. Back when they used to do mostly squashes on TV people would comment on the generic look of jobbers and how they give away the result before match even starts. That formula seems to have been replaced by the "TV formula" and I'm not sure which is worse. Of course none of this would matter if I hadn't spent ten or more years watching commercial free VHS/DVDs. Commercial releases/bootlegs really spoiled me for watching much televised/"live" wrestling.