Hollinger.

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.

Another issue with the Great Matches argument is that the average matches are just as important to the discussion. When you're talking top 10 of all time, everyone in consideration is going to have a lengthy list of great matches. And while there's subjectivity involved in discussing them, you're talking about stuff that a majority of people can look at and agree it's great. To me, the separation starts to come further down the list. Just sticking to guys frequently mentioned in this thread, if you toss me six hour DVDs of 2.5-3 star matches from Flair, Hansen, Funk and Lawler, Flair is probably the disc I'm least interested in watching. He's probably at the back end of my top 10, and no doubt one of the greatest of all time, but the other three are far more interesting to me with their "typical" performances. That's probably incoherent and half-baked, but I'm at work and trying to juggle my thoughts intermittently with other things.

But this is all true. Why should he pretend it's not?

The crowd at the show was pretty upset about it, too. Lot of booing when they were pulled out, and more when they were made to put on t-shirts. Nobody was going to do anything to cause a disturbance at the show. Several of them (Macho, Jake, Volkoff) are long time local workers. They've been doing this when RAW comes to town for several shows now. Very disappointing, as they're always really popular with the fans, taking pictures outside before the show and hanging out at the bars downtown.

I've had several pleasant interactions with Colt. I know a lot of workers who don't like him because he isn't the type to sit around in the back and bullshit like most bigger names that come around. He's not the fraternizing type, which is very different than most guys in the business. With him, as long as there's an opportunity for him to be out making money, that's his priority. I've never seen any bitterness from him. I've seen him be a dick to people who are hanging around him and potentially keeping him from interacting with people who might spend money, but that's about it. Once the fans are cleared out, or if you've got him in a one on one environment, he's a good guy. At least that's my experience from working with him at several shows.

Hugh Morrus has stepped down from his role, according to Hugh Morrus.

That Thatcher/Williams match from 35 is actually really good. I haven't seen 36, but 35 is a really good show all around.

eyyyyyyyyy maybe ixnay on the talk about the ompscay and the illway.

Am I the only one that thinks Rusev is going over at Mania? I'm seeing a cheapened win at Fastlane to get heat and get everyone bitching that Cena won't lose clean and he's getting his win back at Wrestlemania, then they have Rusev go over clean and he's suddenly a made man to program against Reigns down the line. I could be wrong.

There's absolutely no chance of it happening, but there would be an easy solution to one of their biggest problems if they'd be open minded enough. Roman brings in his Samoan buddy to help him out at Fast Lane. Reigns goes over and gets Brock at Mania, and Bryan gets a match against Joe on the big stage. They get what the want, and the fans are satisfied.

Any chance of someone putting together DVD sets of the best stuff from the 70s that's available? It'd be nice to have everything compiled and made available, especially for a project like this. It seems like the 80s sets are losing steam, and I'd hate to see that kind of archiving project die out. The voting/ranking process has always felt far less important to me than the fact that a group of knowledgeable people were ensuring that the history of wrestling isn't forgotten, and is made relatively easy to get ahold of.

Darnielle talks about wrestling quite a bit on his tumblr. He seems to be a pretty hardcore fan.

I love Roy Nelson like he's family.

Baby Brock would make sense with everyone else that's on the cover of that Wrestlemania program. Giving the rub to Rusev at Mania on the way out would be lovely.