Hollinger.

Fair enough.

"Listen bitches, we like wrestling and talking about it but not with clueless fucks." and the facebook rant seemed like a poor way to handle it, but that's just me.

I love Thatcher. I don't see him as best in the world. The way he carries himself in the ring is excellent. Does the little things well. Great facials.

Who is running the Titans account and being a total embarrassment on Twitter?

I'm just amazed that fat fuck Gigolo Massaro, who I was watching in the 90s when Roland used to send a young boy free video tapes, is still working.

Absolutely. The ridiculous pageantry is the best part of Wrestlemania, to be honest.

Yeah, I think people underestimate how much of that persona is him taking the piss out of himself.

I'd be into that.

Sitting w/ Rob at BOLA was fun because we kept getting excited about the opposite people.

Heh... watched the show with half a dozen people and not one of us came away thinking it wasn't the Kingdom. There was a lot of drinking involved. Makes total sense, though. I could see the Chuck Taylor thing, with him not being booked at PWG and all of the public grousing about Trent getting signed ending his career. Maybe a Gentlemen's Club thing? I notice Johnny isn't booked next month either... Team FIST? Although I can't see Gargano bailing on Gabe. I do agree that Aries/MCMG is a pretty appealing option, and a big deal re: ROH history. Though WWN making a big deal out of the GenNext reunion for this weekend seems to point against that. It's much tougher to tell with the way the relationships between ROH/WWN/PWG have changed over the last couple months.

I have a theory that the Benoit matches really ended Angle's career (in terms of being good). Those matches were so crazy and awful and got such praise that he went even more and more into that style. Agreed. The reaction to the Rumble match ruined him as a worker.

And now apparently the battle royal. So it's basically just stretching the show to 5 hours.

Well, there is Axxess stuff being shown on the Network, but who knows what it will be. I'd imagine the NXT tournament matches will be shown to some degree.

at the PPV, it was obviously the Kingdom, and the announcers were making reference to it when they were hitting all of the Kingdom's signature spots

a 7 man ladder match will pretty much be exactly like the other MITB matches, with a belt instead of a briefcase. Seems pretty straightforward.

I can't believe Dalton Castle/Ashley Remington hasn't been signed yet. Dude has charisma out the ass, a good look, and two fun gimmicks. Perfect dude to develop for a midcard JTTS gimmick.

Yup. Put on quite a bit more weight since then, but he's been hanging around the Wisconsin/Chicago area forever. I thought it was odd when he popped up in the "Top Prospect" tournament. Good for him, though. Good hand and brings something different to the table for ROH.

Working for Harley back in the early 2000s, he was Dinn T. Moore. Good dude.

Knowing the wives of those involved, I can say without a doubt that is absolutely false.

If I were to tell you one of the last two entries mentioned Johnny Sorrow, and it WASN'T the guy calling himself "Wrestlerotica", would anyone believe me?

I haven't been particularly enthusiastic beyond "It's Wrestlemania" but even though most of the show was boring, being at RAW this week helped get me kind of pumped up. The Brock promo and Heyman/Reigns got me more into the main event than I had been, the six man was fun and that match should be entertaining, and the shit with Sting at the end was really exciting in person, with the crowd reaction making me think they might be able to pull this off.

I love what I've seen from Smash. $7.49 for unlimited access to all of their shows? Fantastic deal.

I'm half fucking with you, Parv. I enjoy the Backlund as Terminator stuff, and think most of the freakishly strong bumpkin that will grind you to death stuff works. But I do agree with you about a lot of the structure issues with his default template matches. Going back to the same hold over and over, the one move comebacks, it's all there. I just haven't spent as much time watching the week to week stuff from the company during that period as you have, so it's never been something that irritated me more than just being forgettable. And I know that goes against part of the argument that I made in the Flair thread about the average matches mattering as much as the great matches, but I'm not arguing Backlund as a top 10 guy. He'll probably fall around the top of the back half of my list, without having made an actual preliminary list yet.

Jesus, I miss Cook. Wonder what he's doing these days.

This is an interesting question. Are you looking at working with other top-level guys as a plus or minus? On one hand, working with top talent should make for better matches and angles if you are going in with a great promo guy. On the other hand, I think we need to consider if an opponent is considered a top level talent because the original worker elevated them to that point. For example, do people consider Akira Taue a top level talent when discussing Misawa's case as a great? Is Taue considered a great because he worked with Misawa or is he a great period? This seems like an endless loop of a question. There is no right answer to any of these questions from my POV. They are all just discussion points. But all things being equal between two great workers, I would usually pick the worker who made it happen with lesser talent over the worker who had the benefit of working with other all-time greats. Others may look at it differently. Yeah, I don't look at that as a question that means one guy is better than another because of the answer. To me, it's important to ask because it's another angle to examine someone's work from. If the answer is yes, it's worth asking "Is he in a lot of great matches because of the people he was working against? How did he fare versus lesser workers?" If the answer is no, it's worth asking "Is he not thought of as great because of his spot on the card or the promotions he worked? How did he fare versus guys who are considered great?" The reasons are going to be different in every case. It's not a matter of a guy getting extra points because of a yes/no answer.