Death From Above

That's kind of an interesting sub-point. There's also the thought that a lot of the raunchy/offensive stuff Brett didn't like has seemingly been assigned to Russo, you wonder if at some point it would have come to a head before October of '99. And if Bret was still working and involved in anything hot, it would have been much easier to cut Russo loose than Bret. WWF were willing to let Russo leave by October of 1999 anyway, so there doesn't seem to be any reason to think they'd have fired Bret over Russo if Bret had been willing to stay. And WCW would have very likely still wanted Russo regardless. You look at the lack of depth on a card like Wrestlemania XV and it's not as if they couldn't have used another guy in a top slot at the time.

Is this the one with Regal's antics where he's not sure who to interfere on behalf of, Vince's daughter or his girlfriend? Because that match was indeed so much more awesome than it had any right to be. The ladies brought so much hate (for a WWE women's match). And the post match promo where Vince is losing it and Regal makes Regal faces was gold too. Really solid sort of "filler" between bigger matches.

I'll also throw out the obvious of "Every big match in Stampede Wrestling ever". Pretty much everything was clipped to hell, with God only knows how much good stuff left on a cutting room floor and probably swept into a trash can. Bloody shame that, even if you have to put up with Ed awful Whalen on commentary because he was such a big local media figure. I don't know how exactly Stampede would have measured up to the other major territories, but sadly we'll never even really have the footage to properly make a judgement call.

Lance doesn't strike me as a dick, so much as just being the kind of person that actually answers a question with his honest opinion when someone asks. It's not like he's gone out of his way to troll the hell out of people over the years like, say, Shane Douglas. I'm not a fan of his though. Never have been, never will be.

It would be a real shame if the Japanese stuff hadn't been there in the old observers. A few interesting little tidbits have floated out when people post old Observers from time to time that would probably be just lost info without those.

My answer hasn't changed in a long time. Destroyer vs. Billy Robinson happened at some point(s) in the 1970's, but never in All Japan, places like New Zealand or something. As far as anyone knows, none of it ever made tape. But I can't imagine that not being pretty darn fun. Too bad it is probably on that long list of things just lost to the void. Also, the Dick Murdoch/Flair 60 minute draw from Mid South that Joel Watts claimed was the best match he'd ever seen, but he left the master film in his car trunk on a very hot day and the film melted, lost forever. Poo.

Theme music was an area that I always felt WCW suffered as time went on. The way they would mic their ring on Nitro sounded cooler than on Raw somehow, but in theme music they mostly sucked wind past a small handful (n.W.o. theme, Goldberg). I am not really a big nostalgia guy for the WWF/E's in house themes, but at least they all followed a formula that made the worker instantly identifiable. Song opens with either a quote or a sound effect specific to the worker, followed by a simple 12-bar thing you could identify. A lot of WCW stuff sounded exactly the same, and they never gave most of it enough volume to even tell it all apart. so many guys in that company just had "generic rock band thing" as an entrance. It was a weird area the WWF kicked their ass.

Nice to see them find more mic time for the Giselle character, calling out Brady's fellow stablemates for failing at the moment of truth. Amazing how often heels draw heat just for telling the truth.

I haven't really watched wrestling much in years. Hell last time I did regularly was the DVDVR Mid South project (good a way as any to go out, I suppose). Also: I like Japan. A list like this doesn't really reflect how much I enjoy a lot of the gimmickry around American wrestling, because I tend to like big Japanese matches better than big American ones out of context. But let's see what my failing wrestling memory comes up with. From main event on down: The 1996 Takada vs. Hashimoto IWGP TItle match. Not a long match, but super intense, and my favourite IWGP title match of them all. Had an amazing aura of being a title fight that most wrestling doesn't get to, and was one hell of a match to boot. Takada is a super-hit and miss worker for me, but this ruled. And it seems like a singles belt should be in the main event. 6/9/95 Kawada/Taue vs. Misawa/Kobashi. Probably the best match I've ever seen. Uncreative answer but you can't really go wrong with this. Abdullah the Butcher/The Sheik vs. Terry Funk/Dory Funk Jr. I guess I can't really nominate both the 1977 and 1979 Real World Tag League Finals, which is too bad because I *always* watch them together, and I still think they are probably my two favourite crazy brawls ever. I guess I'll take 1979 if I get one or the other since it's the finale. Also: crazy, crazy, crazy crowds. It's just the greatest atmosphere. Ricky Steamboat vs. Ric Flair - The 1984 Meadowlands match. It was shorter than some of the follow ups in 1989 but it might be my favourite of them all. The only other one that is close for me is the 2 out of 3 falls match, and this is a show that would already push the limits for a lot of people for attention span. Jumbo Tsuruta vs. Genichiro Tenryu 6/5/89. Jumbo is my favourite wrestler ever, and this was probably right at the top of the list of his best matches. Tenryu is a guy that's always been super fun too. This was amazing, I'd probably rather rewatch it than a lot of the Four Corners matches from the 1990's at this point because this would still be somewhat fresher for me anyway. Plus it was better than all of that save for *maybe* the absolute top drawer stuff. Stan Hansen vs. Andre the Giant, New Japan. Hoenstly I like a few Stan matches better, mainly the Kobashi classic, but since I can't use workers twice... why not? This was a great "immovable object vs. Irresitable force" match, and Hansen is one of my 3 favorites ever, he has to be on the show. Good spectacle match to have on a dream show. I like it better than say any of the Hansen vs. Americans stuff in All Japan that I've seen, so this works. The 2/3 falls Toyota/Yamada vs. Kansai/Ozaki match from Dream Rush was pretty mindblowing and I have a hard time leaving it off. Toyota is a worker you can criticize the hell out of, be right, but she still has an amazing match list. El Samurai vs. Jushin Liger, BOSJ 1992 final. A really fun battle that might be my favourite for either guy. Lots of action and a surprising amount of hate when there needed to be. This had just about everything. I've read the criticisms of it not aging well, and maybe I'd think that if I watched it again, but whatever. It filled a hole at the time. Would be a fun way to open a dream card. I was really tempted to throw in Baba vs. The Destroyer, but then you're starting to risk getting into running a Big Egg Universe show that goes on for 15 years. I don't know if I could even do a PPV length show using a dream match formula, I am too into the long epics. I realize this list above is very long, in terms of being a show. Does feel weird with no Vader match too because I mark out for Vader. And I really don't hate American wrestling. Honest. I miss WCW, and I like plenty of WWF/E but I don't know how much of it fits my individually favourite matches. This was kind of haphazard but that's what I've got off the top of my head. I should do a separate one just for WWF and WCW or something. If I do I will try and limit it to 500 words. (Edited to fix apostrophes changing to weird symbols when you copy/paste them to the forum from MS Word. And then edited again because I changed my mind on my joshi match.)

I thought the Uncensored match was basically changed on the fly. Flair starts bleeding inside of the first 2 minutes if I remember right, and they just pitched the stip and worked a cage match? Maybe it was just weird booking but that would be *really* weird. It wasn't awful but if you look at Flair's other major opponents, he has better matches against pretty much all of them than he does with Hogan.

Wrestlemania IX really sucked a lot. I remember when I first saw it a few years ago, you get that Hogan/Beefcake vs. Money Inc. match and Hogan does pretty much nothing in the match, playing Robert Gibson to Beefcake's Ricky Morton (okay, that felt dirty to even type), just spends the whole match standing around on the apron. But I knew he was going to face Yokozuna later so I thought "ok that makes sense, he has another match to go". Then he just comes out and squashes Yokozuna in like 5 seconds. So no, he was just being lazy. Starrcade 1997 was about as damaging as any PPV main event could be to a company, in the end. Especially when you look at what they did for follow up too. To me, it's more interesting than the Montreal screwjob, which has been turned inside out far more. I think it's also quite possible that Hogan fucking Sting cost WCW a lot more money than Vince fucking Bret ever did, considering that the WWF/E did just fine afterwards. Everything in WCW from 1998 on other than putting over Goldberg was generally pretty bad. (I don't think we can say it's his fault they gave it away on TV.) Halloween Havoc 1999 and it's associated build is just about as bad as it can possibly get. I can't think of a single good Hogan/Flair match. He might be Flair's all time worst big time opponent. Flair had a better match with Vince McMahon than any of his matches with Hogan.

I always thought Suburban Commando was good fun too, as far as b-cheese goes. I mean, Hulk Hogan punched out a mime. What's not to like? I've never seen No Holds Barred. To my shame. All the Hogan nonsense/stories that come out in the sheets really entertains me. I won't deny he's had periods that were terrible, but I've enjoyed a lot more Hogan matches than a lot of people might guess. The WWE produced Hulk Still Rules DVD was quite entertaining.

Not to derail this totally with FMW discussion, but for how long was Onita the booker? Was he still the guy running it when they got into the Hayabusa/Tanaka/Shinzaki vs. Team No Respect period in (I think) 96/97? Because that period was really, really fun in general before it eventually derailed and the company came apart at the seams. This kind of sums up how I feel about the American indy interpetation of Japanese wrestling of the 1990's and early 2000's in general. White kids working "strong style" where they just slap the shit out of each other and do head drops for no reason, and make no money. And it was always laughable from the beginning. It was inmates running the asylum and pandering to their own taste, instead of actually giving the average local fan a style they were interested in digesting. Of course, Japan as a whole sort of drove off the cliff there eventually, but that only adds to the "lemming see, lemming do, lemming no understand" feel of the whole American strong style thing.

Not at all on Choshu, not really arguing with you here. I would point out that Inoki (or Vince or anyone else) having massive negatives doesn't necessarily equate to them being less "important". Big mistakes can have just as significant an effect on the business as a brilliant move. Maybe more so. In that sense, at least even Inoki's failures have tended to be pretty honkin' grand failures. He just seems to be that kind of person.

Everyone has their black marks. Choshu certainly included. World Japan anyone?

Why has this guy always had so much heat anyway? He's not a legend of the ring or anything, but he always seemed fine to me.

Personally I much prefer Baba's product to Inoki's (with some brief exceptions) but in terms of who was the more important figure as a promoter yeah it's definitely Inoki. It would be really hard to overstate his overall importance to the Japanese and even the world scene. Although I kind of see them joined at the hip in a sense, and they were probably good for each other. Probably pushed each other on in their own way. Similarly to how for my money the WWE has fallen off since it no longer had anyone to challenge them and keep them needing to find new ways to keep the fans involved. Most wrestling promoters seem to need someone to measure themselves against or a bit of healthy competition to really get them going.

For me, a good Mr. Consistancy might be Jushin Thunder Liger. He's a guy where almost every time I watched him wrestle I felt like I knew I was going to get, at the least, a fun match. I haven't kept up with Japanese wrestling for years, but through all of the 1990's (and what I've seen of him pre-mask in the 1980's) and into the early 2000's I loved watching him a ton. Incredible career.

I haven't gone back and rewatched any of it in a long time, but I remember back when Nagata went on that long IWGP title run that was longer than Hashimoto's record (because Hashimoto was gone to Zero-1 so someone had to break his record of course) that I really felt by the end it did him at least as much harm as good. The fans were onto what they were doing and by the end had kind of turned on him being shoved down their throats a bit. That was my impression at the time anyway.

I don't think anyone who saw the Paul Ellerig Workout Videos from the Mid South 1980's set could ever wash them out of their mind. Kids are people too! Whack-a-do, whack-a-do! Ha ha ha.

If Tanaka is going in that's kind of a clear sign that there are just no real candidates left in male Japanese wrestling. And I really like the guy too. Still worlds better than Nakanishi, but neither is within 25 miles of a hall of fame case to me.

I really need to watch some non WWF/WCW Jimmy Hart at some point, because he always struck me as a totally useless buffoon there even when I was a kid. Having seen mostly just that, he never did anything for me at all. But the (very) little I've seen from Memphis was quite different and looked really promising.

The best promo guy in the company wins a decision. What a surprise.

I've always had a sneaking soft spot for the bad guys. Back in the days of like grade 3 when everyone is doing The Royal Rumble doing recess, kids would fight over being Hogan and I'd just call dibs on being The Million Dollar Man.

Honestly I started out to write something more complete than just the beginning and end, but that sucker would be too much even for me to do off the top of my head in one shot. :-) Lots of fun plots abound, plus I never got around to some of the roles of other guys in The Patriots stable, like Vince Wilfork as the long term veteran enforcer (A role he got from Rodney Harrison "I want you to have... MY SPOT"), and the new, big, meathead du jour getting a big push in Rob "The Hulk" Gronkowski, etc. I am not sure which Horseman Wes Welker should really be, though. Guy discarded by other company too soon, becomes great compliment point to superstar Brady. I wasn't watching the NFL religiously back in 2001 so I probably would have missed the good little Bledsoe sub-plot there, but that's a good add on. Football's always been the real pro wrestling anyway. As clearly evidenced by the number of football players in wrestling in the heyday.