Robert S

Dolph Ziggler vs. Seth Rollins vs. Randy Orton vs. John Morrison doing the same stipulation? If you happen to like one of those guys, you can replace them by Bray Wyatt, Jinder Mahal, Bobby Lashley oder Robert Roode. Alternatively, Big Show (2020) vs. Kane (2020) vs. Braun Strowman vs. Lars Sullivan should do the trick as well.

There were hardly and PC guys/girls on the card yesterday anyway, which I guess is to the point as well. The only real PC trainee was Velveteen Dream. Gargano, Kai and Cole are there long enough that you also have to factor PC in for them. But apart from them? Kross, Reed and Grimes came in last year, Thatcher this year, Lee, Priest and Shirai in 2018. Looking at the NXT roster on Wikipedia, there are so few people who really came up from the PC.

The worst thing Bret Hart has ever done in his career was introducing the ladder match to Vince McMahon. The worst thing the Hardys ever did was to introduce the clusterfuck ladder match to WWF. How many ladder matches does WWE run each year on TV / PPV? It has to be at least 10 on average the last couple of years. Looking at matches like this, it's amazing, that there have not been more Joey Mercurys, Edges and Christians, who got their careers seriously shortened by the insane spots. Just this match alone had a bunch of spots, that could have easily gone wrong and if they had gone wrong, it would have been really bad. For example, Damian Priest almost did not get the necessary length he needed to get in the Paul London ladder run dive spot (it looks like he stumbled at the end or got a bit scared and reduced speed). Also look how close Reed's and Candice's heads were together during the big splash. The impact could have gone seriously wrong.

Why do they feel the need for 3 minute entrances in the Performance Center? It just looks ridiculous if they only have to take 5 steps until they are in the ring and then have to pose for 2.5 more minutes.

The watchalongs Cornette is doing are really good. Besides the occasional jab at how everyone was a better worker back then and did not have to plan much in advance, the watchalongs are full of detailed analysis. The latest episode has watchalongs of the two Summerslam 93 matches he was involved in (Steiners vs. Heavenly Bodies and Yokozuna vs. Luger). By the way: I have found the perfect way to listen to Cornette's podcasts: on his youtube channel, for each episode there are 5 to 10 clips. So you can easily choose what you want to hear and what not ("Do I want to hear his thoughts about Kenny Omega's assistant? Pass. His thoughts on the relationship between Memphis and Mid-South? Could be interesting.").

I am surprised that you did not mention the camera angle of the CM Punk interview during intermission: Traci Brooks boobs were let's say very prominently featured. Punk's head was somewhere in the left or bottom-left half of the screen while Traci's boobs were right in the center (and most of the time you could not see a face connected to the boobs). New Japan camera crews (who did very creepy shots when Maria Kanellis was over there, for example) would have been proud of that angles.

Quick googling lists the Northern Lights variation as the Muken. I guess this is the move in question:

I thought Cathy Kelley was god awful and never seemed interested in being there. Is Charly Caruso still with the company? I always thought that she was pretty decent.

15 years ago, you had problems with getting a PC with a 3.5 inch floppy disk drive, 10 years ago, you had to get your VHS recorder from the attic, nowadays you have to buy / borrow a USB DVD drive (and if you do, you can only pray that your 10-15 year old DVDs are still working - the ones I burned myself have about a drop-out rate of 0.5, I should probably have burned them at 1x speed and not 4x or whatever). What technology will be obsolete in 2030?

I have watched a watchalong or two with Tony, but I was not the biggest fan of them. Tony is okay, but Conrad is a put-off for me. Yesterday, I also tried to listen to a Something to Wrestle With watchalong. I chose Survivor Series 87 because I thought this event should not give Bruce much chance to go on a Meltzer-rant (for one, Prichard at this point was just a production assistant, i.e. not deeply involved within backstage politics, plus I thought there should not be big disputes for that event). The first 20 minutes or so were fine (besides a suspicious timeline or two), then Thompson gave a quick history behind the Survivor Series (i.e. Vince attacking JCP by running a PPV head-to-head and telling cable operators either carry Survivor Series instead of Starrcade or they won't get Wrestlemania IV). Then Bruce went on a rant attacking Dave (who was not named at all by Conrad) how this stuff is bullshit only by giving an almost identical story, though one where Vince looks even more aggressive (Vince telling cable operators to not carry Starrcade if they want to get Wrestlemania, on which some cable operators requested an alternative which ended up being Survivor Series - I would have to look up, what was actually reported back then). That was it for me and Bruce Pritchard podcasts.

"Finishers Only" is either the best of worst stipulation I have ever read, I cannot decide. EDIT: Damn, it seems to be a match where hitting the finisher nets you the victory, i.e. stupid video game stipulation #14, not a match where you can only use finishers.

With a gimmick as 40-year-olds up-and-coming tag team?

For some time, they were much in love with alliterations, so I am surprised that he is not the Archer of Anarchy or the Archer of Agony or somthing like that.

Masao Inoue is a mid/undercard-for-life wrestler. A guy who never really could have succeeded in 90s or 00s All Japan or NOAH. He lacked size, charisma and athletic ability. However, he was usually pretty servicable in 6 man tags throwing in comedy and heel spots (usually worked in a comedy fashion). Inoue was the unlikely challenger here, somehow winning a single elimination tournament using heel tactics (beating rookie Taniguchi, Sano via a cradle and Saito via count out). They also worked this match unlike a usual NOAH title match (at least unlike any title match without Yoshinari Ogawa), much more like a US territory era match. This and the tag team title challenge with Saito vs. Misawa & Ogawa in September 04 were by far the career highlights of Inoue. There is also a lengthy treatise on this match by the segunda caida guys: http://segundacaida.blogspot.com/2017/03/2006-match-of-year.html Another thing, that matters a bit to this match: two years ago, Akiyama defended the GHC hardcore title within two weeks against Inoue, Saito and Kawabata. As he considered them not serious challengers, he counted each of the three matches only as 1/3 defense.

Regarding the question in the thread title: no, because he is (or at least seems to be) not the brightest candle. Post in-right career, he might survive in a stooge role, though by then Vince likely is retired, dead or gone otherwise, so who knows how the corporate structure post-Vince will look like. If Vince sells the company instead of passing it over the Stephanie (which there were rumors about a couple of months ago), I don't see a future for the "stooge"-like guys.

I have got the occasional 521 server error for years, this is not a new problem like the SSL stuff is.

At the same time, he was also known as one of the most unreliable people in wrestling in 1980ies w.r.t. no shows, so there is another side to this as well. Who knows what is true, what is exaggerated and what is false (on both sides, stiffing vs. no shows).

I (located in Austria) have those problems as well for two or three weeks from time to time, though never as severe that a reload of the page does not work.

Has G+ started airing older AJPW Budokan Hall shows? Today, on well known wrestling trackers, two Budokan Hall shows popped with with G+ as source, one being the one with Misawa's first triple crown title defence against Kawada (10/21/92) and I doubt that this show was around in full before. I mean the card does not look really good besides the main event and two mid card tag team matches, but still.

Daniel Bryan went without saying.

Including rival promoters not taking him serious enough / believing him went he said he had no interest in taking over territories.

The white supremacist baybface is easy (DOA), fun-loving Nazi, maybe Baron Von Raschke? The happy-go-lucky rapist... face gay gimmicks often go that way (Danshoku Dino being the most extreme example coming to mind). Am I missing more obvious examples?

The botch on the first try is not so bad itself. Yes, the spot looks a bit weird, but if Flair did not call the same spot instantly again, I would have forgotten it quickly. But yes, calling the same spot again directly after it was botched is a cardinal sin to me. If you absolutely want to do that spot, then come back to it a minute or two later.

On a first glance, the saying often has been that Vince has good eye for talent and knows how to get them over, but if you look at it in details, you can come up with a long list of stars that got to the star level in spite of their booking or what Vince saw in them, not because of it: - Austin is an obvious candidate - for the Rock it was obvious that they saw a lot in him, but his first run almost killed him - Cena was probably not that far away from getting released at the next spring cleaning - Foley was at first only brought in as yet-another-monster for the Undertaker - Jericho came in hot, but until the Unified title run (and even afterwards), he was (besides the hot program he had with Triple H in spring / early summer of 2000) not much further up the totem pole than he was in WCW - besides the world title run in 04, Benoit did about as much in WCW as he did in WWF/WWE (upper mid card guy who could be trusted to always have a good to great match) - Eddie came in as a package deal with the Radicals, apparently he was the one they were interested in the least (Benoit and Saturn were considered as the ones with the star potential; I forget about Malenko, but I assume they thought they could use him as cornerstone of the Lightheavyweight division, as the did for a short time) - ignoring how WWE slept on a lot of guys in the early 2000s, even when they eventually got them, they almost resented when they got over more then they expected them to (see Daniel Bryan's Yes-phase) - without the steroid scandal, Bret (and maybe even Shawn) would have never gotten the run he eventually had

A "GCW Bloodsports" division or whatever could have worked, but instead, they turned it into a cartoon on the first episode (with strippers / scantily clad dancing girls, a hostile overtake by a syndicate, cinematic-like production, ridiculous patrons (including one dragged into the ring to get beat up), a bouncer standing in front of a fake underground bar, Shane f'n McMahon etc.). It is not salvagable anymore, they have destroyed any chance this had, it's just another cinematic wrestling thing that has been overdone to death since the one or two successes they had at Mania.