El-P

So, one of the characters in this French role-play Youtube series is : John Cena (just watch the opening) He's probably gonna die a horrible death too. (if anything, it speaks about how Cena still is the most recognizable modern pro-wrestling figure today)

That and a great sense of timing are actually the reasons he's so good. People focusing on strike exchange (which is a modern puroresu trope, not an Ishii trope per say) just miss the bigger picture with Ishii. He's a detail and nuance guy. Terrific worker with quite an interesting career arc too.

The Kane gimmick should have had a shelf-life of about 10 months. It's been 20 years and as such, Glen Jacobs can be considered the worst major performer of the last 20 years. Almost nothing but shit matches and shit angles (not his fault but ne never made anything better) over a 20 years period. Painfull on every level.

At this point, only the most senile portion of the audience and the hardcore retromaniacs will pop. Ding ding ding. We have a winner.

Honestly, at this point, after the Saudi show, Hogan coming back is not even a footnote.

The issue with such a match is that it'll never gonna get a fair shake from all the people already prepared to hate it. When you look at things with a filter, there's no way around it, you're gonna see what you want to see anyway. I wasn't a fan of their first Tokyo Dome show match, watched in full post-hype mode. Then later in the year I went and watch the other two (that had been praised to the Moon by Meltz) and I suprisingly loved them (and believe me, I was not going in with any positive preconception, and tried to do away with any negative ones). If I'm going by the big Omega matches of last year (including this year's Dome show), I absolutely go into this one expecting something excellent at least. If I'm going by the latest big Omega matches, I fear some overlong fuckery. But haters gonna hate anyway.

Jericho never was a "cool dad". He does turn into "drunk uncle" though, which is awesome. I guess he must have binged after he got back from that awful show last weak.

*Agressors* ? Really ? Come on now... People are just being annoyed by the constant attention whoring (aka "me and my odd views") and pseudo victimization ("why am I being attacked ?"). The fucked up spelling alone would be enough to drive anyone crazy especially when he has showed before he was totally capable of actually using a perfectly readable format (huge mistake, that). Honestly at this point I don't care one way or another, but we all know how this is gonna end up, really... (I have crossed path with some guys acting pretty much the same before elsewhere, it always ends the same because they can't help it...)

Gotta factor the fact most of the shoot interviews and podcasts are also full of bullshit. I mean, Bischoff is notoriously full of shit too. So, I don't see how source sources do much damage to Meltz honestly. Was he wrong in the past (and probably today too) at times ? Sure. But I wouldn't take most of these insiders declaration as facts either, especially when they are know bullshitters to begin with. As far as Prichard goes, I pretty much agree with the whole "let's have a sneak peak into Vince's brain" being fascinating. To his credit, Bruce also takes no glove at time when he thinks some of the stuff was awful or didn't make any sense. But you have to know he's mostly throwing the WWE company line and won't ever critizice TriPaul on serious offense (his take on the Booker promo and program was ridiculous to the point he wasn't even trying not looking like he was full of shit). And he's an excellent storyteller. So there.

Lucha fan Freudian slip.

Good call there !

Agreed I love them as well, Francine and Lynn have a great chemistry and their reactions to Sandman were funny as hell. On episode 9, Francine died laughing several times listening to New Jack's stories. And she's really funny too at times.

Extremely poor audio quality on Bischoff's side. So he wasn't influenced at all by the UWF-I invasion of NJ (mmkay...) but he wanted to present WCW as more reality based like it was in Japan. Which I guess is why Hogan pushed the Giant's off Cobo Arena's roof. And Blood Runs Cold. And the Dungeon of Doom. After one hour, there's still no mention of Kevin Sullivan (no idea if he's gonna get any credit at all, he only was the guy who put the shows together after all). And really, Uncle Eric is quite the unengaging listen (say what you want about Bruce, but he's charismatic as hell and a great storyteller). I've heard too much about those things already. It's too bad the Schiavone podcast has turned into a long big joke, because I'd rather listen to Tony talk about WCW. Pass.

Holy shit !

I always enjoyed that principle of hierarchy and age in japanese pro-wrestling. I think it really goes along with the way Japanese society is structured as a whole, but it gives a sense of "reality" (as opposed to "performance") that is very compelling to me. It also allows every match that involves such elements to have simple yet effective stories, without having to explain anything (it's expected the veteran to be much better despite his age, so the young boy just hanging on or pushing the veteran a bit creates an easy dynamic to get into).

Classic Baba picture. Harley Race was ruggedly handsome I would guess.

To me it didn't hurt the pacing at all and like you said I take it as a way to bring the match down a bit, which is needed if you want to pick it up again. The whole "hurting the pacing" can really be the crux of argument about such sequences in matches. For instance I just watched the Sano vs Misawa match from 2003 and this is clearly the case where a figure four spot on Sano's part did hurt the pacing and dynamic for a little while because it didn't make much sense (Sano had been kicking Misawa's stomach repetitively, as well as using a top rope footstomp), to the point Misawa just seemed disinterested in selling it, almost in a way of expressing "well, this spot ain't going anywhere, I'm not selling this stuff". Like I said I thought the leg work here was fine and didn't hurt the pacing nor the dynamic there. Maybe it didn't bring a whole lot to the match, but it didn't hurt it either.

Well, I thought he had a horse kinda face. And he looked dumb as fuck too. I guess if you like the dumb jock style, it can pass for attractive, but really… Abs and other muscles don't do the trick unless you have no brain either.

That's the one I really look forward too, as I'm a fan of Karen, and the real-life dynamic is "only in pro-wrestling" level of fuckery. It was pretty fascinating to see the Angle couple slowly but surely go to hell in 2008, meanwhile IRL, Karen would go for a divorce a few months later. Talk about life imitating art (or the other way around).

I guess the only time he was actually enjoyable to some degree as a worker/character was teaming with Bryan and Waltman. There's a pattern there too...

Hell, *I* enjoyed that sitcom back in the days. But I began to divorce from the angle as early as KOTR when they took the belt off Austin to put it on Kane, who was too much of a gimmick to me. Then during the Summer the brothers getting back together was kinda fresh, but once you reach the fall with Kane being thrown in all these super boring matches on top, the character (and worker, who never impressed me much) jumped the shark. From there it's almost 20 years of worthless matches and angles. Quite a run.

Well, that figure-four spot was ill advised on Sano's part. Misawa wasn't selling that stuff very much although he did sell it a bit afterward. Apart from that, it was indeed a really good match with Sano using that round-kick to stop Misawa on his tracks every time he could. Excellent long term selling of those shots and the brutal footstomp by old Misawa too, whose elbows are just too much for that Sano fellow, who had quite a unique career. It's all about hierarchy in NOAH, so you won't get a super competitive match with Misawa in danger to lose, really, but Sano hanging on for a while and pushing the old champion was enough to make this compelling.

This thread has officially become "my smark favorite is damn handsome too." Lana disagrees.

He looked like a 80's porn actor. Seedy as shit. Plus forcing himself on Baby Doll ("She likes it !") really drove that point home. Rusev is actually quite a good looking guy, as his recent leaner, cleaner look demonstrates.

Going through this years after the fact, I grew a fondness for what I ended up calling Double J Specials. Once you get the point that the gimmick is gonna be a hundred runs-in and will end up with one, or several, guitar shots, it actually is fun to watch because it also lacks the pretentiousness of the WWE main events of the time (those overlong pseudo-epic by Trips & others). Yes, it was goofy as hell, but as a fan of the old Dog & Pony Show by Raven, those matches could be plenty fun when Jarrett was working hard. And I got a kick out of trying to guess when the lethal guitar shot was actually going to happen. I actually look forward to Jarrett's comeback in late 2008 now. Maybe I'm setting myself up for disappointment, but I always heard good things about the stuff against Angle (funny thing how real life was involved there too). That being said, it seems like every time TNA delivers a classic (Angle vs AJ at Hard Justice), Russo gets annoyed and tries to book the worst stuff possible. So instead of letting the issue rest, the two weeks of TV following the big PPV match had Angle vs AJ in gimmick matches. Classic Russo dumbfuck booking (sadly, it's the entire card that gets really poor booking at this point too, is August 2008 the beginning of the end of what was a pretty damn good year for TNA ? With Gail and soon Christian leaving, it has to be a pretty severe blow.)