El-P

What's up with the whole Billy Gunn family though ?

I watched the last three weeks as the product has had a renewed focus on what I liked ie Salina de la Renta with Los Parks, and I admit watching Mil Muertes is kinda cool still despite not having the awesome LU production. There's no way Dario Cueto is not El Jeffe (either that or it's a total old-school carny tease). If only to see the promos between him & Salina, I'm gonna watch a little bit more (with the remote in hands to FF through the many segments I don't care for, like some Gringo Loco match or Von Erich promo). Also, whatever happened with Alicia Atout signing with AEW at the start of the promotion and ending end working in MLW ? She's really good at what she does. Calvin Tankman, Lio Rush, Richard Holliday & Alex Hammerstone are also good guys there.

*cough* Akira Maeda *cough* Way different time and context though. In the US, no chance ever. That's not the culture. And it would probably be boring as hell too.

Let's be real, the only news of interest is Kamille beating Thunder Rosa to challenge for the NWA title. Which means we could get Kamille showing up in AEW eventually.

Yes. Sadly. Guys in ROH are in limbo, really. The issue with Rush is that as much as he's awesome in Arena Mexico with a rabid crowd, his stuff won't translate as good in the current setting because he's such a audience-interaction based pro-wrestler. But yeah, AEW should just let some underneath people go now (they got way too much guys) and focus on the real catches like La Sombra (and Thea Trinidad).

Wow. I pretty much could not have put it better as to why AEW often looks like it's booked "just for me", but there you go, you pretty much nailed it. I like the kinda disjointed feel of it too (including in the way characters are not strictly defined), because it makes it way more organic (because it is) and lively (because life is disjointed). I of course love the FMW/ECW aspect of it, I love the "a bit of everything for everybody" (although the one thing AEW misses is more shoot-style based stuff, they would need some guys like SZJ or Suzuki) Nitro buffet, I love the old-school studio wrestling promos, and I'll add I love the wacky shit straight out of LU (although they don't go nearly as far as IMPACT would at times) and love the interpromotionnal shit that is happening right now obviously. Do I really need to go on and on and on about Britt Baker vs Thunder Rosa ? Someone mentioned LCO vs HamaKINO, which was a legendary match in my little circle back then, and yeah, that's pretty much it. Blood & guts. Mayumi Ozaki & Megumi Kudo would be proud. Want inclusivity, you got it. First women's match in AEW that I'd very comfortably call a MOTYC.

Exactly. This is what i've done already. I've made a rough draft of whom I'm comfortable having in a top 100 still from the last two Top 100, and adding some that aren't part of either lists (and that includes quit a bit of current workers). Let's be real, apart from when you deal with complete or mostly unknown spots, you're not gonna "discover" a satisfying top 20 ever worker out of a hat that has barely been discussed. I pretty much "know" who are most of the candidates for the top spots, excluding the following : One of the questions for me is how are the best modern candidates gonna fit in that picture, as really some of the best pro-wrestling I've ever seen has happened in the last 3 or 4 years, from guys who already had some heavily pimped stuff for at least 5 or more years before and are still active at the top level (not to mention guys like Jay White or Fénix for instance, what are they gonna accomplish in the upcoming 5 years ?). Which is why, although it may seem almost a paradox, but really ins't at all, to me one of the main way of approaching this thing is closely following the modern stuff that I really enjoy as it happens. Another question as I (re)visit joshi and hopefully lucha, how much of their candidates are gonna end up on the list and how many at the very top spots. I've been "studying" the previous Top 100 and it's quite interesting how things have evolved and why, and it says as much (if not much more) about the context of the process as about the greatness of the workers ending up on the lists, really. And if there's one thing striking is that in 2016, lucha libre barely made a dent compared to 10 years before while women wrestling pretty much got axed down, which was a real shame. One thing I'm actually looking forward to with @Grimmas wanting to make it more inclusive is how this will affect the result and what it will tell of the viewing habits and mediation (even more than tastes) of whoever ends up being the voting crew this time around. But anyway, yeah, if you want to make it fun, make a draft. It doesn't mean things won't change (even drastically sometime maybe) and that some candidates are gonna shoot up while others are gonna disappear in the end, while other unexpected names will show up. Doesn't matter if the final list is very different (or not), but it sure helps as a tool. Sure helps me identify what can be fun to watch, what I want to watch, what I wont rewatch anymore.

Well, let's be real for a minute. I put the third HHH match in the W because I find it funny as fuck. It's still a bad match though. I put the second HHH match in the W because it did work, but I don't really enjoy it. I could easily have put the Lesnar match in the L, so call me semi-generous on that. Although I admit nothing touches the epicness of both Micheals matches, my two favourites actually happened back to back too and are the Batista and Edge matches. Two great matches, two totally different styles. The Batista match is a great bombfest, just the perfect spectacle for a Mania in a stadium. The Edge match is really smartly laid out, like, super smart (not sure what that says about Edge, I know he's pretty much hated around this part but the fact remains, it's easily the smartest laid out Taker match I've seen and it ain't Taker doing it). The Shane match like I said is some of the worst shit I've ever seen. The Big Boss Man match would be nothing, but the total garbage misuse of the gimmick and the post-match makes it offensive as hell. The Bundy, Gonzalez and Kane matches are terrible. So yeah, it's a bunch of highs and a bunch of the lowest of the low. As long as Taker who doing the zombie gimmick, which he did to perfection, his matches plain sucked. So, "playing your role right" goes so far, but I've always been advocating that "playing your role right" was usually played as a card to defend limited or shitty workers. I can't say I was really impressed by any of Taker's performance until I guess the Batista match. He did a fine job carrying Flair & Orton (one because he was past his prime and without any confidence left, the other because he was dull as fuck). What struck me also is that he really never had an epic match until it became really a self-conscious affair that he *had to* and the context and setting put all the good cards in his deck. Him and Michaels did had two great, epic matches, in a style that really isn't the best to me because it is the apex of a self-conscious Mania epic. It did work, no argument at all and I have no issue calling both match great. But it has to be said it was a grand production from the get-go. It's also a time when Taker was working toward having that one great match a year, so if he failed, that would have been pretty much the entirety of his output for the year which would have been considered a failure. Four years straight, he had great matches. Then, he had a really forced epic and a really forced failed epic (the two Triple H matches, none of which I'd call great, the worst of the two being also the most entertaining), another excellent/great match in which he was totally carried by Punk. And then it was a bunch of nothing to awful matches/performances (until the cinematic, of course, but it "doesn't count"). Coming off this little project, I can't say I'm very impressed with Taker as a worker. I was always under the impression he was overrated whenever he was in the conversation for "great big man worker", but for sure his best output at Mania has heavily dependent on a context that really advantaged him on all fronts. And his negative output is actually pretty damn big and pretty damn low. Blame the gimmick, blame the opponents, the fact remains he almost never comes off as a great worker to me. A good one on average, for sure. A guy who became better at working big matches when he got past 40, but for a few years only because he was already shot. But for a long, long time, he just wasn't very compelling (his first really good match at Mania was more or less carried by Kevin Nash's heavy looking offense and charisma to me) and relied almost solely on a gimmick that was both awesome and pretty restricting in term of working good matches.

WrestleMania 36 (2020) – Undertaker vs AJ Styles This is COVID-era, this is cinematic pro-wrestling, this is not really a match so I won’t even get into it, as it’s still fresh in everybody’s mind and it was quite the amazing spectacle and a great performance from everyone involved (that includes the production people) and really capped off the Taker’s arc in some bizarre, almost fan-fiction way (it’s only logical he came back as pretty much his own biker-self, the Grim Reaper had basically vanished if you don’t count his Disney-ish fan service bonus appearance the previous year), really characteristic of its times, and against one of the greatest pro-wrestler ever. Since he came back way too many times before and they screwed up with some really bad stuff after the end of the Streak, at least we got this to get very satisfying ending credits I guess. This was very much Make Undertaker Great Again. 14-1-12

And so I expect people to bitch about Coach Tony K. showing in face on "TV" in a very Scott D'Amore way (although there's a lot worse things than being influenced by D'Amore, hey, here's a guy you'd want as a script doctor for your booking). I see the show is 2 hours long. Yeah, no. Dynamite + BTE + a few matches here and there on either Dark will do. With eventually another show on TV (which I expect to be really different this time), that's just too much content to watch for a single promotion. Too much time to invest if I want to also check out other wrestling stuff. They should be careful of not driving themselves into complete mental overdrive like WCW did, many have said that Thunder is what killed the booking because it was just too much work.

So, you're getting a Shane-O Mac match at Mania again. Aren't you all happy and glad ? A whole year of COVID was worth the wait, right ? Yeah, they also showed it on TV in the flashback segment some time ago when WWE ran the match (was it on Raw ? on a secondary PPV ? don't remember).

I *knew* there was a simpler way but I never paid attention to this ! And I knew someone was gonna point it out to me too !

Oh that's right. Silly me. I meant he was basically the top guy in the promotion; The angle with Vader re-established him big time after the so-so stuff with Rude.

It's not a theory, it's a fact. Hogan vs Flair did not draw well in 91 in WWF. The contexts were vastly different. In 91 Hulkamania was a tired thing in WWF. Flair was never presented as that huge of a deal (certainly not in the booking) before winning the Rumble, he was the guy with "some blurred world title belt". His main feud on TV was with Piper, who was mostly an announcer then, there was no real build for Hogan vs Flair on TV. In 94, it was Hulk's first match ever in WCW, which was seen as a huge event in itself. Flair had been the top heel in the company since he came back in 93. The match was totally sold as a dream match between the two greatest pro-wrestling stars ever, it was really the jumpstart of a brand new WCW under Bischoff. The entire promotion then was build around this match.

Yep. They were the main reason I still watched part of the show, but lately there's just too much too watch and I don't want to get burned out. I usually watch a match or two if I have some interest in them. Put Taz instead of JR on Dynamite and you have a killer trio.

Connection issue just as I posted = triple post.

WrestleMania 34 (2018) – "Undertaker vs John Cena" There’s this idea that Disney should buy WWE. Well, this "match" gives you pretty much the idea of what WWE would be under Disney. This is basically what we call « fan service ». Much like Disney has done with the Star Wars franchise (since we’re talking about brands here, really), from the atrocious (that last trilogy, especially the very last movie which is an embarrassment of epic proportions) to the « quite ok job of selling toys » with the Mandalorian. In other words : Mania 33 : Undertaker the perfect send-off Mania 34 : nevermind... Yeah, I know it’s wrestling, but it still makes no sense whatsoever to have Taker back after the perfect ending. But you gotta do fan service. Ok. Yeah, sure the intro is still great. And fuck me if John Cena is not doing some of the greatest sell-job for Taker’s character. Yeah Shane McMahon you useless waste oxygen supply, JOHN MOFERFUCKING CENA is selling that’s he’s INTIMIDATED by the Undertaker. Anyway. That is actually what’s so depressing about this. Well, that and the fact that despite playing the hits for two minutes (fan service), Taker does about the most laughable flying clothesline he ever did (I mean, Kane would approve of it...) and really doesn’t look like « the best he's ever been » like this dumb fuck Micheal Cole says at the end. Yeah, the announcing really has reached a level of straight verbal lobotomy, it’s crazy anyone can still listen to this shit without going totally gaga. But anyway. What’s so depressing about this is that THIS is the Taker vs John Cena Mania match we get. Why in the living fuck could they not have booked the ONE dream match EVERYONE ACTUALLY WANTED FOREVER BEFORE ENDING THE STREAK ? So there, John Cena vs Undertaker is a two minutes fan-service idiotic non-match one year after one of the greatest send-off and Mania closing ever. Well fucking done. And really now, this is not a match. This is pure fan-service. If this was a match, John Cena kicks out of the finisher as everybody as done, including that goof Bray Wyatt whom Cena had defeated a few years before (not to mention that other idiot whose name I won’t even write anymore). It’s just ridiculous. About as ridiculous as Disney bringing back a CGI Carrie Fisher to work some nonsense sequence. Might as well been a CGI Taker there. So ok, I get it, people in the stadium sure were happy to see Taker and why the fuck not, but in the grand scheme of things it makes no sense and is a very frustrating reminder that we never got and will never get maybe the biggest dream match WWE could have booked for seemingly ten years now, and seeing how GREAT Cena is at little things like his amazing sell of the zombie sit-up (he basically stumbles and stop as he was running toward Taker), it’s a pretty safe bet that it would have been one of the best Taker’s Mania matches and one of the greatest big stadium spectacle ever. Instead we got fan-service years too late. Fuck you WWE. 13-1-12

Moose vs Swann was terrific. People would go gaga over this match if it had happened in WWE. Moose is a trooper, he was built for months and months, delivered big time in big matches, got in the best shape of his life, all to put Swann over. Ace Austin back as X-div champ was the right move, TJP is a great technical worker but so flat as the same time. Deaner & Doering vs Storm & Sabin was really solid. Deonna had the best ODB match you're gonna have at this point. And so, FinJuice are the new IMPACT tag team champ. These NJ guys sure know how to work an exciting ending stretch, match got excellent at the end. Surprising and exciting result.

Uhhhhh.... So this is basically just more Dark matches with only a different announcing team ? I expected something else. Dunno why, but something different in term of format. Gonna watch the main event eventually, but I was barely watching Dark at all anymore, I'm not gonna watch more of the same. It's a good thing Dynamite really delivered this week, otherwise it would have been a streak of letdowns.

Considering the mild activity on this thread, it's just about as good. I doubt the Youtube show is gonna get much talk. Maki Itoh vs Riho as a main event, I'm so there this week.

The big difference is that Cornette would never say 1/10 of what he says to the people in person. .......... wait....

Also, I would always rather watch something that isn't successful but that I enjoy (ie IMPACT/Lucha Underground) than something that is successful but that I don't enjoy (WWE). Of course something that isn't successful has more chance to end (LU), but everything has to end eventually. And if something gets successful but I don't like it anymore (WWF in 99), then I don't watch it anymore so it ends anyway.

Oh, I don't mean there's a correlation. Also I could not care less about the WWE HoF in term of what it represents. But the fact they always want to induct women (for obvious reasons) and yet Sable has not been inducted yet struck me as kinda odd. I wonder if there's anything there (I know she sued them, but then worked for them again, so it can't be this).

Best reason ever. Don't need more. Also, to the "I want them to succeed" crowd, newsflash : that's what they do. Maybe not the way you'd want them to, but they are already succeeding. They won the war with NXT, they have a great TV deal, they just made the biggest non WWE PPV in 22 years, workers want to sign with them. Things are going quite ok, really. There's no impending gloom & doom because of some booking issues (which are greatly overstated, really, as I have mostly loved their TV shows lately apart from the terrible build for the Shaq match and some minor stuff) and two big mistakes on a PPV, one of which being an accident (the other one could have been prevented, BTW Christian meant nothing in term of ratings on Dynamite, so there goes the narrative of "huge huge star" and whatnot). At some point, how many goalpost can one move before accepting that they are actually doing quite well, especially considering the context ? They are not doing Attitude Era numbers ? Good. I don't want another Attitude Era. I don't care if they go mainstream or not. I want a healthy pro-wrestling promotion presenting a product that I enjoy. This is the case *now*.

Aaron Stevens was probably the worst part of the NWA reboot, he's a guy who clearly belongs in WWE (that's where he shined the most by far and has been brutally annoying to me in NWA). That he of all (but who's left ?) people would get an NWA title really makes the entire thing like a complete joke. This needs a mercy killing, really. Last thing for Aldis to do is grab that big match with Kenny Omega and pass him the title so Omega can add it to the upcoming TNA/IMPACT/AAA/AEW collection and do the old Ultimo Dragon gimmick.