El-P

Honestly, the balance of "awesome" and "problematic" weighs so much toward the former to me that I can totally bear with the later. No pro-wrestling promotion is gonna be perfect. I loved Lucha Underground, but I still thought some of it sucked. Ditto ECW. Ditto current IMPACT (to a lesser extent, apart from the AEW deal, they are clearly not as fun as they were in 2019/early 00)

Awww, come on, like it's anything new. I was never impressed that much during Roman's many pushes of terror when it happened. Not that I thought he was bad, but certainly nothing special to me. Too "WWE main event style" patterned. The Superman Punch spamming annoyed me to no end. He seems to have hit his stride lately as a heel, good for him. That does not kept me from putting him over in that Taker match though.

That for instance is something I did not get. I'm all for non-commentary cinematic matches like AJ vs Taker. I'm all for commentary on stuff like the Stadium Stampede. But the commentary + music on the street fight felt like a miscalculation. Considering how it was shot and produced, this pretty much asked for non-commentary. But if you are doing commentary (which still strikes me as a bit odd considering how cinematic it was), the music just doesn't belong then.

I dunno about the public perception, but as you know I'm not a Roman fan and as I was watching this match live, I knew Roman was the one saving it from disaster. Why am I not surprised you replied to that one first bubba ?

Jumbo / Hansen. Two of the best ever. In the same context. Never clicked.

Pretty much makes a great guideline. N°6 is give or take, but I would not be pissed off at all by that result either.

Wouldn't it be fair to say it was actually Micheals ? That would make a fun game.

WrestleMania 33 (2017) – Undertaker vs Roman Reigns This was the mercy killing, in more ways than one. It was also the match that should have followed the Brock Lesnar one, when Taker was in much better shape than he is there, as he truly comes off old and broken down. That actually plays into the work and the amazing post-match which really renews with the Mythical quality of the character (as opposed to the Brock post-match which turned him into a mere mortal), but the match itself would have been much better if Taker had been in the same shape he was two years before. If there’s a match to show to display Roman Reigns qualities as a worker, it’s this one, as he’s gonna work around Taker’s limitations with great care, despite being absolutely shit on by the audience although in that case, it’s less damaging for him as he’s literally putting Taker out to pasture, which can only be a heel posture. Anyway, this is really the last true Mania match for Taker, with a big match feel that hasn’t been felt since the Brock one, and honestly judging by the crowd reaction, hasn’t been felt since the Triple H ones. Taker has grown back his hair long, to get the old-school look. Well, it’s more the "look old" now, really. Speaking of Old-School, I believe it’s the very first time there’s not even a tease of it (hey, maybe since the Snuka match !), if anything else it truly shows it’s the end. Snake Eyes/Big Boot really is the only true classic medium spot he does, as Roman is busy pinballing for him and doing what Taker can’t do anymore : be quick and fast and snappy. Not for to long though because Taker can’t follow up, so there’s this huge spot outside with Roman spearing Taker through a table, from there it allows Taker do basically be half-dead, which he was (and I don’t mean the early zombie gimmick either). They’ll soon transition into what is now a given, Roman kicking out of the Tombstone. Hearing the announcers acting shocked is the most ridiculous thing ever, it’s only been the 8th consecutive year now. A straight Tombstone is not a finisher, hasn’t been forever now. So, that part is quite the ridiculous WWE pseudo-nearfall and drama, as is Taker kicking out the of first spear. Like, doh ! Roman beating on Taker, who looks gassed as all hell, ends up on the corner for the good old trope of the Last Ride set-up (really Roman ? REALLY ?), for a powerbomb with no power, Taker puts everything he has left to lift Roman a bit higher than the last few years and basically lets him fall... Kinda sad. This is gonna turn into some re-enactment of the first Triple H match (they are working the same No Holds Barred gimmick BTW), as smokes and mirrors are a requisite at this stage, with Roman beating Taker with the chair and telling him to stay down. This is goint into a chokeslam onto the chair for an actual credible nearfall, that one did work. A Tombstone reversal is tried and it’s a very visible failure as they try twice and fumbles down, Roman eventually just does a Superman Punch to save the day. It also kinda depresses the crowd audibly. The *real* pathetic state of Taker at this point (there’s another instance where he’s totally out of place for the Superman Punches and Roman has to work around him, literally) plays into the match, as it is the story of a mercy killing, Taker doing the Michaels spot of grabbing Roman’s legs in a nice callback. Time to kick out of another spear and for Roman to sell the drama, which he does more than well honestly. This dynamic works much better than the Brock match honestly, as the inevitable finish actually was very well built. So there, Taker has lost, and he has visibly lost it. The post-match is brilliant though, both the visual of Roman looking back toward the ring with the huge Mania setup enlightened by giant fireworks and of course Taker as an almost a spectral figure in full gear, taking off his gloves, folding his leather coat and taking off his hat for the very last time (not!), to the genuine emotion of the crowd, and then slowly leaving the scene and being sucked into the ground in the middle of the giant ramp. Just a perfect ending for the character after a match which, despite its shortcomings (Taker being visibly washed up and the kinda ridiculous forced drama induced by the first obligatory kick-out-of-finishers sequence, which at this point was no more than another trope and transition bit toward a bigger finish) worked pretty well, mostly (entirely ?) thanks to Roman’s performance. Yeah, this match should have followed the loss to Brock for a last act, or at the very least followed a cool post-loss match with a huge star like, say, John Cena. But of course, we did not get that now, did we ? 13-1-11

But in both those cases, no one remembers the matches. I mean, I admit I'm not the biggest 80's WWF fan and my favorite Steamboat period is also 90's WCW.

The Ric Flair feud ? Come on now. He was the uncoolest guy ever with his wife and baby dressed as a dragon. Fucking hell. Agreed (although my babyface MVP would be Dustin). But I for one can't remember any promo nor angle, just a bunch of great matches. I don't see how this is even a negative either, I made the remark in a purely descriptive way. And I do agree he was never booked in many super memorable angles... maybe part of it because he did not need to. Because he could have great matches. That's basically why Flair booked him to have his redux feud with in 94.

BTW, no one talked about how Darby Allin vs Scorpio Sky was basically Bret vs Backlund on Superstars in 94. A face vs face technical match with an out of nowhere (and out of frustration) attack after the technical finish, complete with Scorpio trying to hurt Darby while in the hold, then looking at his hands in disbelief, then liking what he saw... I can't believe no one has mentioned it thus far !

Oh yeah, totally agree about Adrian Street. That was the whole trick about Goldust too to an extent. Damn, Goldust could have been so much more than he ended up being with a much more progressive mind (speaking about Vince here, not Dustin) behind the gimmick (and a different audience than the 1996 one).

I don't know, I thought the conversation here was interesting with people bringing up different points that made me think, so it's all good.

I actually agree with you in term of "there are inconsistencies", and my answer was "they are learning on the job, they are all inexperienced guys in that field with less than two years booking and writing a TV show". I for one would not mind at all if the whole show was totally meta. But I don't mind the mix of meta/not meta either. Also, being meta doesn't equal with insincere. @Big Pete mentioned how winking at the cam was the new kayfabe, and there's something to that, yes. I understand why some don't like it. I don't mind at all, because like I said, they are "like us", they are the product of the same culture of binge watching pro-wrestling and digesting it in speedrun mode. And I mean, Godard used to do the "wink at the camera" thing almost 60 years ago in movies.

Sissy = effeminate = gay. The insult was homophobic and misogynistic at the same time. It was subtle but not that subtle either.

Everything in pro-wrestling is seen as "being booked for your entertainment". You're grasping at straws here by wanting to make this whole" Who turned off the light" way more important than it is. I don't think you'd ask any ECW fans this question during Lawler's and Cornette's appearance at the Arena and the answer would have been "Oh, it's Paul E." in a kayfabe way. You make it seem everything in ECW was meta, but it was not. People popped because it was an awesome angle, yes. But they did not pop thinking "Oh, Paul E shut off the light so it makes sense because ECW is controlled chaos". They popped for the angle. They popped for the booker/promotion because it delivered something cool. But no one is mixing the fact the angle was cool with the fact it made any sense kayfabe wise. Shutting off the light was a production trick and it was accepted as a production trick. Yes, AEW did a mistake (hilarious actually) with the Sammy segment the other day. It doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things, like "Who turned off the light" doesn't really matter. Honestly, there's more important things to nitpick like why is SCU all of a sudden the n°1 ranked when they haven't been seen forever on Dynamite ? That to me is a bigger issue in term of dealing with details. If you don't watch Dark, you have no idea they are even winning matches. And if you watch Dark, you know they are winning matches against JTTS, so how that qualifies them as being the n°1 ranked when they really haven't beat any top tag team like FTR ? And if they are the n°1 ranked, why is that they don't get the tag title shots before Pac & Fénix, who have won a battle royal but haven't a big W number to their names ? There you have a detail management issue, one that bothers me a whole lot more that "who turned off the lights".

And that's pretty much who they are. I was referring to Tony Khan (and Mox) as "one of us" in term of getting the same experiences as many of us (posting on DVDVR, buying tapes from the IWA deathmatch tournament after seeing Terry Funk in ECW). And to me, that's what I love about it and this generation. The former generations were carnies. This is truly the first generation of workers and promoters who come from a "smart mark" (aka "curious fans") background. Maybe that's why some of "us" don't like it. They are too much like us, but they get to do what we only did in fantasy leagues and our fantasies period. Only they do it their way, which obviously is not everyone's way. So, some are gonna be happy about it (me, others), some aren't.

Agree about everything. The Jerry Lawler & Jim Cornette in ECW are great instance of ECW *not making sense* in the conventional way, but what mattered was the moment and the heat it produced. The bolded sentence is a perfect summary of the approach I love, very well put. In general, I find people are putting way too much weight into the "psychological" aspect of pro-wrestling, whereas I see it more and more as a "flux", and sometime, making sense in a "psychological" way is less important than hitting the right note, even if it has to be a dissonant one. That also goes for in-ring work BTW, where sometimes an abrupt transition or a spot that "doesn't make sense" but that will awe the audience is way more important than "playing your role right" in creating a great "flux" of pro-wrestling.

Really now people ? You're watching those early Cornette stuff and you never got it was not-too-subtle hints at him being gay, with the usual rampant homophobic stuff of the days ? Wow. I mean, I would not have guessed it watching him later on, but the early stuff is as clear as day. Plus the joke name on Barnett. Oh my boys... Anyway, honest question. How *less* listeners would Cornette's podcast do if he went back to only talk about old-school wrestling and never addressed AEW (nor WWE) again ?

I had missed that post earlier on. Yeah, Eddie is just a gift to pro-wrestling. They really did the best job possible to "save" the disaster with that promo. Blaming it on IMPACT was funny as hell too. And also, what's more important : the tag-team of Mox & Kingston working on top... just picture the matches and promos we can get from this unit. I'm salivating.

I never thought about that one but hell, Vince don't like a guy not seen as top level dating a hot blonde. Miro the bulgarian brute the husband of Lana ? We ain't having that. Maybe Vince is pissed because Ashley is engaged with this lowly luchador. I mean, I won't lie, I would LOVE to see Charlotte Flair leave the nest and travel the world. Ok, go to AEW basically, because she is not going anywhere else. Their history of trying to push latino stars after Eddie (and they had to scrap to convince Vince anyway) has been a failure from A to Z. Rey was pushed for the wrong reasons and his world title reign was a joke. Alberto could have been.... but then again his toxic personality would have surfaced at one point for sure, in retrospect. And anyway they fucked him too and he ended up in a useless stable with other "foreigners". Remember when they sign the biggest star in Mexico, a guy named Mistico ? Yeah, but it was *his* fault, see, because he acted like a superstar who knew what was gonna get him over. Silly him. I don't think it's even fair to discuss the Mascara Dorada case, that guy who looked like one of the best worker in the world during those NJ tours... Talk about a guy who's wasting years... Garza is not going anywhere either. Zelina Vega, well, she got her ass fired because she likes the idea of a union and doesn't like to be told she can't make money on the side, because independent contractors don't do that.

That's exactly what I was trying to remember, that damn Meng push ! Well, Dusty's booking effectively helped kill JCP. His stint as a booker in TNA, post-Russo/pre-D'Amore, in 2004 was just awful. I know Dusty's popularity has risen a lot the last 10 years with NXT and his death, but the pendulum has swung way too far on the positive side to the point people have forgotten haw terrible Dusty's booking has been at times too. Of course, Nash's booking of WCW has been well documented.

Did Taylor really took over or was he just more influent ? I thought Sullivan was still basically booking in the first half of 98. I don't remember Terry Taylor being the top booker ever.

I believe there was somebody between Sullivan (who was totally burned out by 98 honestly) and Nash. I should now, really. Wasn't Dusty helping at some point in the Summer of 98 ? They had guys who had been doing this for 15 years (and learned from the best). Not one and a half. Hey, WCW 96/97 is some of my all-time favorite pro-wrestling, I'm not the one telling you're wrong about it being immensely more consistent than current AEW. I'm just telling you can't expect them to be as good as the best of them when they are new at this.

No one ever kicked out of the One Winged Angel (Ibushi maybe once in Japan). No one kicked out of Mox finisher I believe. No one kicked out of the Meltzer Driver in AEW I don't think. The "everyone kicks out of finisher galore" really is not a staple of the promotion at all. It's really the WWE Self-Conscious Epic formula (even worse with Lesnar's short match formula which is *only* spamming finishers). There are certainly death spots all over wrestling, still. In WWE, less so.