Death From Above

So the NFL has booked themselves a rematch at Superbowlmania that not a lot of people saw coming even a few weeks ago, although the signs were there in hindsight if you look at it. Eli suddenly getting more help at the right time to build up the team after his individually strong season, and the story all year of "Is Brady so good that, as much as we hate him, he may be impossible to stop". It seems like they figured out that Rodgers and the Packers on the whole have gotten big enough that jobbing them out does no real harm, and instead they are feeding us a Brady/Eli REMATCH. This caught a lot of fans off guard but it seems to be a surprise that's working for them. I'm saying that regardless of what they do with the main event, it's been a clever and well written twist. If Brady wins he locks up being best heel of all time and if Eli wins again he grows into a guy that may not be seen as the every-night superstar of Brees, Rodgers, or Brady but will have the rep of "that guy who we could always put the belt back on and people will believe it". But anyway what I really want to talk about is the history of the Tom Brady build, and also the relationship he's had with his dastardly manager, Bill Belichick. The whole build of Brady is really interesting if you look back to the very start, the year 2000. Brady actually started out as a babyface which a lot of people have forgotten. He was a nice, if driven kid from a family of athletes, who grew up idolizing Joe Montana, one of the biggest babyface stars of all time. He had to scrap for his playing time in the developmental ranks of college, and was a good story when he even made it into Belichick's stable as a new boy taken with a late pick in the NFL draft, who was basically holding the bags of the veterans in the group. He was a driven young man, who wanted very much to be the big star, and he was a likeable enough young fellow. This was how he started, as a feel good story, as The Patriots made the unusual decision of carrying 4 QB's instead of the usual 3 on their roster, just to give this young man a job. "Hey 6th round pick made it to the NFL Universe, that's great. Good for you kid. You never know, maybe someday you'll have your own t-shirt if you work hard". Just as Brady was coming into the Patriots fold in 2000, our evil influence Bill Belichick was involved in a bizarre angle that left fans unsure what to make of him. He'd been working with a team called "The Jets" who had just promoted him to be their new ringside manager, when in a bizarre turn of events only one day later he turned in his resignation. This left both The Jets and the media of NFL Universe confused and unsure what to make of it all. Soon after he became the new ringside adviser to The Patriots. I see this as him, at that point, being in sort of a tweener position where at least at first we aren't supposed to be sure what to make of him. But he is now the new influence in the ear of our young, happy go lucky man, Tom Brady. Things were not instantly successful. 2000 was a bad year for The Patriots (I guess the bookers were still sorting out where they were going with these guys) as it would be the only year that The Patriots were omitted from the NFL's version of the Champion's Carnival known quaintly as "the playoffs". It wasn't a waste though as our young man Brady was able to watch and learn, and gain respect for the boys in the back, while Belichick was able to work on his skills as well. By the end of the year despite not having a major push, it was clear to the powers-that-be that there was the chance to build some real stars here. Maybe they had that magic combo. It couldn't hurt to try! So, 2001. Brady, our noble young lion, has impressed enough to work his way up to playing second fiddle to Patriots veteran Drew Bledsoe. But things did not start well as The Patriots lose both of their first two matches. Then they run an angle where Belichick decides Brady is their new chosen one, and they toss aside the veteran to allow the new young boy his chance for the third match. The first couple weeks for Brady were, in truth, uneventful white bread build we've seen before. He recorded a win and a loss in two acceptable but unspectacular efforts, under the watchful eye of his manager and trainer. But as the season wore along, Brady and Bill (still not clearly defined as heels) were built up well as he'd end up winning 11 of his 14 matches as "the man", winning the AFC East and securing a playoff birth for a team that had been 5-11 the year before. A happy story for everyone, right? What a fine young man Brady is, and that Belichick guy, maybe he's not so bad. He's just driven. And look at the results! That's what they wanted us to think, but the bookers had a big plan that came to fruition in the first playoff match The Patriots would play. It was a heel turn so well done, they talk about it to this day. The infamous "Tuck Rule Game"! Brady was facing one of the NFL's most well known franchises, the Oakland Raiders. They are of course most famous for Darth Vader wearing a super-duper version of one of their helmets in one of the great sponsorship coups of all time, but I digress. That's a different story altogether. As for the game itself. The young star Brady is struggling to finish the deal against the established franchise, under the watchful eye of Bill Belichick at ringside. Oakland were up 7-0 at the half, and then after three quarters looked in solid shape leading 13-3. Young star Brady was given a carrot by scoring a rushing touchdown of his own to make it 13-10 (strangely despite Brady's lack of general running skillz to pop the smart marks, he has always used the QB Sneak as an effective finishing move). With under 2 minutes to go, Brady was hit by Charles Woodson (himself a young star of the time who has grown into a potential NFL Universe Hall of Famer), and appeared to fumble the ball! That's it, thank you young lion Brady! You are pinned, 1-2-3! But wait! The referees are discussing what they've seen, and Bill Belichick, if you look close, could be seen nodding at them, smiling, giving them the thumbs up. And the referees have declared, indeed, it was not a fumble at all, but Brady's arm was moving forward! The "tuck rule", a rare finish that hasn't been pulled out much since (A real stroke of genius, Belichick and the referees conspiring to create a fake rule to confuse the opponent that thinks they have it won). The fans are confused, what is going on? Brady and the Pats finish the job on the now also confused Raiders, scoring a 1-2-3 pinfall, as Brady delivers the finishing blow to his confused opponent. The referee raises Brady's hand, Belichick gives him a hug, and then... pulls out his wad of cash, hands it to the referee, and shakes his hand. Who could also ever forget the infamous "You fans can stick it, brother" interview that followed? Or the fan reaction! How does Brady react, with disgust or disdain? No, but with a smile and a wave, letting everyone know his drive and ambition have won out over his desire to be loved. What matters is winning. By any means. He may be the new golden boy, but if he has to lie, cheat, and steal to get to the top, that's just what he is going to do. This is the Belichick way, and Brady has bought in. The broken, battered body of the Oakland Raiders has never really recovered since from the shock of the moment hitting like a thunderbolt. It was a glorious heel turn. They still talk about it today in a hush and a whisper, people say "I was there". The star of Brady, superheel, was born that day. The Patirots would get pushed all the way to the top that year, being crowned winner of the Champion's Carnival at Superbowl XXXVI, over one of the loveable good guys of the game, Kurt Warner, along the way cementing the place of the Brady/Belichick tandem as the new top dastardly duo of them all. Warner was a great foil to be the final hurdle that year, because he himself was a feel good story. He'd been languishing in the minor leagues for years, and was a late bloomer into being a star of NFL Universe, but unlike Brady he stayed on the path of good. It was a poignant moment to see the contrast of the pair, and Warner did a good job helping Brady construct a memorable final to secure his position as a new top heel. Warner was always a really solid babyface, I liked him a lot. We all know the story from there as this tandem has become the most feared, and reviled heel tandem of them all. Brady's gimmick as the ultra-driven supertalent who wants to win at all costs is well known, and it balances perfectly with Belichick, the evil genius always whispering him advice, driving him to go one step further, do one more dirty deed, who always seems to have another trick up his sleeve, willing to do it all, and is equally driven. They even brought in a blonde valet for Brady, for the extra heat, as men cannot help but envy Tom "The Chosen One" Brady, even if they hate him. They are a megastar combo, The Patriots perhaps the kings of heels. The choice to have him put over Eli Manning a few years ago caught a lot of people off guard, because Eli was still seen as a pretty inconsistent young worker then. It was probably a big gamble, but if you look at where it puts them now it looks like it has worked out well. Eli is now established as a "man of the moment" type. He won't dominate you every match, but he's proven himself to have courage and guts, and a willingness to face down any challenge no matter what. He is also one of the few guys seen as a legit threat to Brady, leaving fans uncertain about the result that will be forthcoming at Superbowlmania. Personally I can't wait for the match, and I hope you've enjoyed my little trip down memory lane about one of the great heel turns of all time.

Not specifically a house show but I do sort of regret not hitting a WWE show in Edmonton years ago one of the couple times they rolled through with Flair on the card, just because I never did see him live and honestly at this point it's beyond kidding myself into thinking that's really worthwhile. Not that TNA is rolling through central Alberta any time soon. But it would have been cool to mark out for Flair live, just one time.

There were a lot of people put off by the meanness of the top faces in that Austin/Rock period so it wasn't just you. Of course for every one of those that walked away it seemed like 5 new fans came in who now talk about it like it was a golden age, even though a lot of it was before The Rock actually got good and Austin was at probably his all time low as a worker, but that's an entirely separate issue.

I lost my password here ages ago then sort of gave up after like 20 tries to decipher the Rosetta Stone that is those pictures you have to type out to get a new password here, then got a new comp and was gone forever. But came back and finally got a picture I could decipher. Those really aren't very clear though. I got lucky that I got one with two 3's, a 4, a 7 and an A in it, but some of them are as good as a totally different alphabet.

By wrestling standards of "retirement" hasn't he been retired for a couple years now?

There is a pretty huge gap between groupies and stalkers and I'm kind of disheartened at where this is going already.

I feel like I want to get a comment in before this one picks up steam, because I know I'm out on my own with this one, and people are going to disagree with my important opinion on the interwebz and we all know how THAT ends. But this is probably my favorite 6-man tag of all time, and seriously one of 10 matches that really shaped me as a wrestling fan. I remember when a buddy of mine first got some AJPW TV in glorious grainy, shitty 4-th gen VHS (of which I made a grainier, shittier 5th gen copy, of course, and I played the hell out of them all... God bless the good old days), this was a match that just totally blew me off the face of the planet. Watching Raw and Nitro every week, this was certainly about as different a planet for match length as you could step into. And really, these are probably at the end of the day six of my (more or less) 25 favorite wrestlers ever, as it turns out. My transition out of just watching what was readily in front of my face went ECW > Japanese Hardcore stuff > All and New Japan > everything else. This is definitely one of the matches that really stoked the fires to me, it was just a story I could watch all day. And probably did if you add the times I've watched it together. I don't expect anyone else to love it as much as I do, but there you have it. It's my baby and so it's perfect, to me.

What was the full story behind that match where Fujita dropped the IWGP title to Kensuke Sasaki in like 90 seconds? I seem to remember it being a really bad period for New Japan. Something like Bob Sapp wins IWGP > Sapp loses shoot to Fujita > Inoki panics and sticks title on Fujita > Fujita makes a fuss about something or other > company drops belt to Sasaki in a major stinker. I've forgotten most of the details though where Fujita basically didn't have to work. The company looked really bad through that whole phase. There was a lot of ill will among the puro community for that whole timeframe.

Flair for the Gold always reminded me of Donahue for some reason. Flair just standing around in a suit trying to get his questions in surrounded by idiots. I'm not sure this has really changed. Have you ever watched Dr. Phil? A lot of those episodes are straight up Jerry Springer for the suburbs instead of the trailer parks.

If there has been a worse faction name in wrestling history than S.E.X. I don't even want to know what it is. It's something you'd expect if the company was run by 13 year old marks. Insert your own joke about the wrestling industry here. A "complete and accurate history of TNA" would be the thing that would probably push my limits to see if I could read through it all. Well done to make it through all this sir. Looking forward to more... sort of. Man I'm tempted to just outright call this a top 10 career Konnan highlight.

As someone on DVDVR said, CM Punk broke the internet. Again. When I'm actually halfway interested about wanting to see a WWE PPV, it's a rare fucking day indeed.

Couldn't agree more. Sting/Flair at the Clash was interesting once, but then you're aware they literally do the *entire* match twice, because Sting has nothing else to fill time and I guess by then no one wanted to see matwork, or something (not that there's any real evidence Sting can do anything on the mat so I suppose it's not like I'm suggesting they should do that). Not all of the Luger/Flair matches were aces, but the best ones absolutely crush it by a mile. Overall I'd be tempted to take Luger as I enjoyed his high end stuff more on the whole. He had periods where he wasn't good at all (not that Sting hasn't), but I enjoyed his peaks just fine. Sting I also like and I think he's done a lot to work through more than one questionable program in his time, but I'd have a hard time putting together a list of what I thought his supposedly great matches are once you got past a couple. Sting is also one of the worst promos among top level guys in US history for long periods of time. Very goofy guy even for wrestling. Silent Sting in WCW was a blessing in disguise, at least for a time. Haven't really looked at it close but I suspect if I went through it all I'd come away thinking Luger might be a little underrated as a promo.

I assume the Onita vs. Tenryu Super-Duper Sparkler Cage of Death (If Onita loses he must retire in one year) from 5/5/94 is quite likely to make an appearance, both for significance and because not surprisingly when he's working Tenryu instead of, like, Mr. fucking Pogo, it's one of Onita's better FMW matches from this timeframe. I'm sure there was build up to it as well featuring a tag match but I'm rusty and just totally blanking on dates. I think that was in W.A.R. and it was quite good and heated. The Sabu/Douglas/Funk 60-minutes 3-way from ECW The Night The Line Was Crossed probably has to make an appearance as it is the match that put ECW on the map to quite a few people, but I do remember it sucking pretty bad, really. Hopefully there is a clipped version of it floating around that might be more palatable. On the wrestecrap front there's the JT Smith vs. Mike Awesome match from that same show where Mike almost breaks JT in half on one of those crazy dives he would do, then the top rope breaks. It's a total fucking disaster but ECW had a few of those that you can't really cover their history without looking at. It's also really short, at least. The Bull Nakano vs. Alundra Blayze match from Summerslam might be worth including for a yearbook style format, though having not seen it in forever I have no idea how it holds up. It's nowhere close to "great all time joshi match" but for one held on American soil it probably doesn't get a lot better, so I suppose you include it for comparison if nothing else.

Tenryu/Hogan vs. Road Warriors seems like it should make it simply as an oddity/significant happening since it headlined the Dome and all. I've never actually seen it, mind.

Just like to second this as well. I haven't seen that much ARSION but this was a standout, mat-based contest that had a great sense of struggle and told a great story. Definitely a strong match.

This is not one of the "best" matches I've ever seen, but it is definitely a personal favorite. It really feels like it was supposed to be "Hansen's last hurrah" as a big time top guy, then the NOAH split sort of forced that out the window. But the crowd reactions alone would get this on the set - the crowd turning briefly on Kobashi for beating on Hansen is a fantastically surreal moment for a long time All Japan fan. Bonus: Hansen doing a really cool, low key post match "I'm getting too old for this shit" kind of promo, and him walking out to the tour bus after with a bunch of the hardcore fans still there to send him off even in defeat. Just a fucking awesome moment that absolutely gave me goosebumps.

I always loved Fukazawa, and it was all about the energy. I never picked up more than a few basic phrases at most. People bitching that he's over the top and a goof are seriously in the wrong hobby.

I've read the idea more than once and I just don't get it at all. Explaining it won't make it suddenly make sense either. It's just... why? These people are trying to fail on purpose. It has to be a mass social experiment at this point.

Stan is definitely one of my personal Big Four (along with Jumbo, Misawa, and Terry Funk). The fifth spot would change based on mood but there's never really been a point in relevant memory where those haven't been my shortlist. Stan would have great matches once in a while, but almost always seemed reliable to be at least "very good". And there's a sense of genuine chaos to his matches you really just don't get a sense of in most other matches. He was a guy that could actually have fights with a sense of "struggle" - which so much wrestling is missing - that you could suspend disbelief about and get a real sense of not being really sure what was going to happen next, when he was on. It's just a thing of beauty when it comes off. Stan at his best came off like this unpredictable nut, and it was just a hoot to watch. He's also a guy that really belongs for me in the discussion of great all-time tag team wrestlers. Almost every other regular American in All Japan seems to have been his partner at one point (except Dr. Death). Again I think it's not so much about the matches right at the top end as it is about just the sheer number of matches on that next level down, where there's just so many fun matches you can come across over his career. If you asked me to build the fantasy la-la land promotion and I had to pick a guy to build around that I thought could consistently give me that good match against just about any opponent, Stan is right there at the top. He never worked much in the States but even so I've seen very little of it. I'VE GOT A FAT WIFE AND NINE KIDS TO FEED comes to mind as a highlight, and I like his match with Luger as one of those "very good/odd collectible" things that happened. Would have been interesting if he'd been around more I agree, but he produced a ton of great work in Japan once he went back for a while there, so I won't complain. Hopefully a couple new gems come out of the 1980's project. I find it baffling Hansen vs. Flair either never happened, or at the very least never happened anywhere that was taped. How the hell can that be? It's just... not right. You would think at some point in the 1980's when Flair was around All Japan as a guest attraction that at the very least they must have pitched the idea. That's got to be right at the top of the list of my all time dream matches that would not have required time travel or something really weird happening. Also his AJPW theme is probably my favourite wrestling theme song ever. So there's a bonus point.

I've always been somewhat baffled by the DDP hate. Sure, I've heard about his obsessive need for details and scripting things out to the nth degree in advance, and I understand why a lot of people didn't like it (I'm sure he took a ton of ribbing about it both to his face and behind his back from other workers). But I thought he did a ton to justify his place as a top guy for a decent while. He's this guy that seemed to draw wrath that well outstripped any possible justification, in a club with Marc Mero and some others.

It's kind of amazing all the sillyness they put into trying to get Vampiro over, when I really can't remember a time he drew a decent reaction from the crowd at all. Even most of his work with Sting draws almost no response. And Sting got a fucking match out of Horace Boulder on Thunder once.

I'm pretty sure the "on fire and jumps of the Titantron" thing wasn't actually Sting. The lights conveniently go out for a few seconds before "Sting" gets lit on fire, and I think it was a stuntman in his place. I remember watching it being fairly certain they'd pulled a (pretty decent) switcharoo. Been ages since I watched it though. If it wasn't... Jesus, WCW.

Speaking of Samoa Joe, boy has his arc in TNA been the poster child for crushed hopes and dreams.

The best example yet: TNA wrestler Jesse Neal tweets that he's qualified for food stamps! Yeah that new piece of news was one of the specific reasons I threw that comment in. Although there's been stories in the past about things like workers (and not even new guys, but veterans you should know what you're getting) being offered tryout matches where they have to come down and work a dark match, pay for their own rent-a-car and hotel etc. I don't know if that's still going on but it did at one point, and it seems very lowball for a company with the kind of backing they have and who want to be the #2 representation of their industry on the continent. I know it's not news that there is a massive gap in wrestling between what the big stars and the little people make, but a company of this size should be doing better. The worst paid workers in WWE are still making a living, at least.

Honestly TNA is so utterly absurd if you look at it on the whole over it's entire lifespan that I think you have to start reaching out of wrestling and into completely different fields to start actually finding a valid comparison at this point. And I'm not even sure what those comparisons would be. It's not even just the product being shit. You've also got to add in what seems like a disproportionately high amount of tension between the employees, the seemingly reckless condoning of some employee's substance problems, the way it seems to be a complete money funnel down the tubes (even though a lot of it's employees seem underpaid), having a unique owner that is completely oblivious etc. If you start listing all the specifics of those it could drag on for ever. And on top of those things, the in-ring product has to be at least ballpark of UWF, but with SWERVES every second match. I almost don't want it to ever die. I want to see how long it can possibly go. A social experiment, if you will.