Death From Above

For me it depends on if you rate soccer in general being strong, or the MLS. The MLS is a C league. That's not going to change because why the fuck would more than a very rare sample of top prime players give up Champion's League money in Europe to come play for Salt Lake and maybe play some random team from Guatemala in the Fake Champions League. But it's also a lot better than it used to be too, and is clearly a league with a really strong fanbase in a number of markets at this point. If people are waiting for the MLS to become the new La Liga before they'll call the sport #2, good luck with that. But really I don't even see how it's relevant. All the real power is in "what are people watching on TV" at the end of the day. Meanwhile though the Premiership's game of the week will draw four time the global audience of the Superbowl routinely, and clearly the audience has grown tremendously for the game in general here. Hell I'm poor and I've got a specialty channel just to watch the Bundesliga. It's not exactly hard to access whatever you want in 2014. As for upswing here, sure World Cup 94 was a huge part of it, because MLS had to be created as a condition of getting the event at all. But don't underestimate the media impact David Beckham joining LA Galaxy made. I openly mocked the move at the time as being a complete waste of money. And I was wrong. The north American media's treatment of MLS altered radically almost from the day he showed up. His celebrity really did do a ton for the league, sort of a mini-Gretzky-in-LA effect. Kids have always played the game a ton here. All the Canadian hockey kids need a summer sport and it swung from usually being baseball to soccer like 30-40 years ago, but the professional game just didn't take hold until more modern times. Soccer destroys the NBA on TV completely here (well, what doesn't, product is next to unwatchable), and has been in really good shape for years.

If TV has proven anything during the history of itself, it's that quality of the show is utterly irrelevant in this sort of discussion. Quality of show has never shown any sort of direct connection to drawing an audience. Issue you're fighting against isn't "is the show any good" it's the stigma that pro wrestling is pro wrestling. The uncool factor it had during every era that wasn't the Monday Night Wars (and even then your audience was more high school and college kids than their parents). That's a hard barrier to break. Then again there was a time the idea of a prime time network cartoon was considered impossible, before The Simpsons happened. So what would be wrestilng's Simpsons? I really can't think of what it would be offhand but it's interesting to consider. Vince's idea about "sports entertainment" was to move away from the idea of calling wrestlers legit athletes because he realized in comparison to legit athletics he has nothing to sell. Figured he had a much better shot selling it like any other TV show. Would changing that help now? I don't know. And even if you want to change, I'm not sold on which direction (more towards "regular show" or more towards "sports") would be better. I would never say never though. TV has thrown some weird curves in terms of trends. Did anyone ever see Dancing With the Stars coming? Hell's Kitchen? Is wrestling in any meaningful way worse than those in a contest of intelligence? Probably not.

Modern hairless chipendale wrestlers (which seems to be at least three quarters of the current TV crop) couldn't look less intimidating if they all crossdressed. In fact a good chunk of them would look significantly more intimidating as drag queens than they do as men in speedos. I literally know of no other subculture but wrestling where bodybuilders are considered a tough guy look, but that's Vince projecting his fetishes for you.

The only fake reality TV shows I like are all on the Nat Geo channel for some fucking reason. (And boy for a channel that is supposed to in theory be a higher standard than average TV, Nat Geo can slum with the best of them.) I can't even explain it. Why do I watch Wicked Tuna? I don't know. All of the conflicts between boat captains are an obvious work, and they edit the shit out of everything to patch together an interesting narrative. But somehow it works. They had a show with teams doing this race through the Alaskan wilderness that was full of obvious eye rolling fake "danger" moments too, yet somehow I watched the whole season even though it was ludicrously obvious the whole thing was a work. Pro wrestling works.

West of Dudleyville.

Jumbo Tsuruta and Barry Windham had a match in All Japan that was about the most disappointing thing I can imagine Jumbo Tsuruta and Barry Windham having. On paper that should be, like, absolutely amazing, but it just never got going and was an unbelievably nothing match in the big picture. The Misawa/Hase match isn't a bad choice. Hase works the arm all match and Misawa just won't sell it. I'm a massive Misawa fan but that match is really hard to find a defense for. Hase/Kawada was just miles better.

I could see him winding up in a GM role or something. But I agree at this point, he isn't needed, and this feels too late for me to be that excited about it.

When I say 90's Japan it's not just All and New Japan although those are obviously the meat, but so many of the little companies went through periods of ridiculous goodness before falling away. It was a totally bizarre buffet of styles you end up going through when you look at the total picture, to me. No region is close to that sort of variety now, and it seems pretty unlikely to happen any time again in the foreseeable future. In terms of just an individual company, although I don't watch it week to week I have no particular beef with the current WWE.

I think Flair wrestled Stan Hansen once, but it isn't on tape as far as I know. So that sort of qualifies.

Hansen's a guy I'd have a completely awful time picking a best year for, but the whole is just something else.

I love what Japanese wrestling was, but that was a long time ago now. To be honest I'm so out of that scene now I wouldn't even know where to begin starting over. Even by the end of the 90's it was obvious things were degrading and by about 2003/04 I found my interest waning. Nothing today is the Japan of the 1990's, but then again nothing else ever was or likely will be either.

Based on all the TV we have, Misawa in 92 or 93 is fine by me.

I watched the Nagata/Chono 1 hour draw twice. Once because I had just bought it (God, even the days of disk trading feel antiquated now), then after being trolled by the usual NJPW fans of the day about what an asshole I was for not liking it, I watched it again. Like a lot of one hour draws, there was like 20 minutes of good material in there. But that other 40... yeesh. It's really bad and slow, even for a match going an hour. I have nothing against long matches at all, Japan's actually got a ton of good 45 minute+ matches out there for sure, but this is a clunker. I would not really recommend the experience to others.

I'm trying to think of a less interesting Vader match I've ever seen than Flair/Vader and I honestly can't come up with anything. If it's the same match against anyone but Flair and anywhere but Starrcade no one even brings it up as a top 100 Vader match.

I actually feel like, at least in the IWC circles I run, that me liking the Bret/Owen cage match puts me pretty solidly in the minority.

And, confirmed by Meltzer via twitter if there was any remaining doubt. Also up on WWE dot com and confirmed by Alvarez.

The timing is just so utterly bizarre. I don't really know what else to say about this at the moment.

With a day to digest, this was a really memorable Wrestlemania. I mean, I couldn't tell you half of what was on 29 a year later. I really doubt that will be true of this one.

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Pic of shocked crowd guy is already my favourite meme of the year.

WHAT

It's almost as if booking like 7 matches on a 7 hour show is a bad use of your talent.

Most bizarre crowd singing possible.

Not to be a downer because this is really cool. I just wish Randy Savage was alive to be a part of this moment. That would have been perfect.

If the hall of fame was any indication, a live tweeted Wrestlemania is going to be hilarious.