El-P

Watched a few stuff : Woman's match : Bailey & Sasha need to buy one of these Bruce Prichard T-shirt "I used to be over". They have killed them off so bad. Emma looks like she's thinking about when she had a cool music and some hype. Comparison game : Amazing Kong walking down the ring in 2007 : "I'm gonna fuck up some skinny ass bitches" Nia Jaxx walking down the ring in 2017 : Shampoo commercial That Nia comeback was atrocious, she was just gone after a death spot then got back in the ring without selling any damage at all, meanwhile still not looking like a monster. Emma didn't do the job. Remember when Bailey had potential to be a huge star ? Remember when Charlotte & Sasha had a main-event that was MOTYC material ? Now it's multi-women bullshit no-one really cares about and the softest monster of all time. John Cena vs Roman Reigns Yep. Awful WWE self-conscious epic. Cena craked me up in the beginning though with his antics. He should work like Larry Z. Reigns is more akin to Randy Orton with a godawfully boring heat segment. Then : bomb, kick-out / your turn : bomb, kick-out / rinse / repeat. Just bad, boring typical stuff I don't care one bit about. Reigns is so much the Warrior/Luger to Cena's Hogan. Brock vs Braun So, after the awesome stuff they delivered last time around in the multi-match, they pretty much gave us the best possible Davey Boy Smith vs Warlord match. Hey, it was still better than Cena vs Reigns, in its early 90's solidness. Ah ah. Vince is still a GENIUS with all this great booking. No, seriously, this puts a new meaning to the word UNDERWHELMING, especially when on paper, it could/should have been really fun. But the WWE is not a fun pro-wrestling company, really.

Good ! Wish you courage !

Not at all. He was responsible for the women's division rise, which was excellent and actually drew ratings, and pretty much everything good in TNA while Russo was also there can be attributed to Mantell. I may be wrong but I thought that mantell at one point left all of the mens side of things alone and focused purely on the knockouts and I think this coincided with the start of the great awesome kong vs kim feud. Not sure if he just left the men alone, but he went on record saying he was the one responsible for creating the women's title and booking Gail vs Kong to kickstart the whole thing and ran with it. And yeah, I'm going through it these days, it's simply awesome indeed.

Agreed about D'Amore. I've said it recently, D'Amore's TNA is so easy and fun to watch, producing a lot of legit great matches thanks to Joe/AJ/Daniels.

Agreed. UWF is overrated as all hell (and even Mid-South is to some extent).

Not at all. He was responsible for the women's division rise, which was excellent and actually drew ratings, and pretty much everything good in TNA while Russo was also there can be attributed to Mantell.

Choshu & Baba, for reasons already explained above. Vince is the greatest promoter ever. Booker ? Waaaaaaay to much godawful shit over the years, way to much completely fucked up opportunities (Invasion anyone). For every great WWF/E moment, there's ten awful crappy ones.

Agreed. It was Russo without any filter at all. Stuff he couldn't do in WCW, he finally could do there. And it's brutal.

Same here. Always loved Horowitz and was glad he got a little bit of a push then. Horowitz was the perfect guy for the job, could work, bump, give you a solid match whomever he worked against, had a good look, had character. A unsung hero of US pro-wrestling if the late 80's/90's.

That's the whole point of the thread… Which is why I could also pick Barry Darsow. I kinda like him, although he basically sucked in every incarnation he's ever been in. But I definitely could pick WWF Bravo too, if only because french announcer Eddie Carpentier would pimp the hell out of him as a major star and player all the time back then. And 14 years old me was buying to every word Carpentier was saying.

Thanks for the info. I knew the name, but no idea how she looked like. (much like Rousey)

Nope. They have to be rather crappy workers to be "boys".

And the final did deliver. Very good/excellent match. I dunno what happened, but Shayna looked twice as good as she did on the Full Sail tapings, and it was not because of Sane either. Finally laying those kicks in, lots of cool heelish attitude, some nifty little stuff (like kicking the rope where Kairi was hanging her arm on). Kairi herself was terrific. She did kinda forgot about the arm work quickly, but she's from the japanese school, you don't sell the arm like crazy just because you've been into a bunch of submission holds, especially early on. So : Indeed. That being said, Shayna showed lots of talent here. She's not that young and probably a little bit banged up, so they shouldn't hesitate to use her and milk whatever money there is in the whole MMA connection. Overall, it I enjoyed the first round because it was fun to discover all these new workers. The second and third round were pretty uneven, Kairi was the saving grace of these shows, having basically all the most solid matches. From the NXT bunch, Bianca Belair really caught my attention. Ripley is gonna get Das Push on physicals alone, one might think. They should definitely sign LeRae & Storm (if that's not done, not following that closely). The Mae Young Classic was all but that, then again, considering whose name it derives from... It was ok with two really good matches (Sane vs Storm & Sane vs Shayna) and quite a bid of forgettable stuff too. Ok, now, I guess it's time for Asuka getting the RAW booking...

So, the semi-finals Shayna vs Martinez was not very good. Some of the worst, weakest kicking stuff I've seen in forever. I'm not wishing for Yumiko Hotta here, but this stuff made Lance Storm looked like Shibata. Anyway, pretty weak-ass "shoot-style" stuff, no heeling from Shayna. The last few spots were okay, but Mercedes really didn't show me much again. Shayna's cool but she's überprotected, so it's Kairi Sane vs Toni Storm was easily the best match of the tournament, by a pretty solid margin. Enjoyed Storm's work quite a bit here. Sane is a terrific babyface, her selling of the arm-bar was quite Mortonesque (or Toyotaesque). Nice stretch to the finish. Very good stuff. Stephy & Trip had to show their face at Full Sail, of course, because HERE WE TAKE THE CREDIT !!!! Kairi looked so freaking tiny next to them and whoever that other woman is. Enjoyed Ross again. Maybe because it's been forever since I've really watched a bunch of pro-wrestling called by good ol' JR (since I'm not his biggest fan), but he was a breath of fresh air and there's no good reason he isn't still the lead announcer.

I can't wait. For obvious reasons.

WWE producing a drama would be fucking awful. They can't write worth a shit. Maybe it would be so bad it's good though. But who, in the audience, really wants to see (and *pay* to) this anyway ?

Quarter-finals were ok. Abbey Laigh (that name, please...) vs Mercedez Martinez was okay because Laigh's work is solid. Martinez is a 16 (!) years veteran ? Ok. I don't see much in her. She's just there. Not bad. Not good. Don't care for the latino gangsta attitude poses. Dull work, not much charisma. For what it was supposed to accomplished, Shayna vs LeRae was easily the best match of this round. Very good work by LeRae. She needs to be signed yesterday. Shayna is protected as all hell, but she's got the attitude and aura. Cool finish and post-match (BTW, I find the deal with both girls in the middle with the ref raising the winner's hand to be corny as fuck, we know who won, ya know...) Ok, people that go to the University, you can identify that you're watching "Women's wrestling !". Gooood. Next week, we'll learn the numbers. I take smart-ass chants over this stupid bullshit (likewise "This is wrestling !", especially when nothing has happened yet). So, women's wrestling it is with Piper Niven vs Toni Storm, which had a cool beginning with a funny comedy spot. I have to say I don't get the hype about good ol' Viper though. The pattern I get after three matches I don't care much for. She does spots she isn't suppose to do because of her body type (see how PC I am there...). Ok. And that's pretty much it. Not that interesting. Maybe the context does her no favors. Dunno. Decent match. As far as pure work goes, Kai vs Sane was easily a step above everything else. Damn, I really like Kai's kicks. She's explosive. Spear + countering the awkward double-stomp = Kairi is cool as hell. Good match, a little on the spotty side. I don't get the booking of putting Martinez in the semis (at all), against Shayna to boot. Abbey would have been much more interesting there. Sane vs Storm can be a cool match though. I don't get the hate for the announcing. I find Ross pretty good. My brain really doesn't hear Lita.

Exhibit #n Brother Ray saying to interviewer Crystal (whom I liked, BTW, she showed personality despite being fed the usual TNA mysoginistic bullshit from everyone, as showed here) that he should "fed" her to Devon, then at the end of a promo concluding with "We take what we want", he forces a kiss on her by grabbing her hair. No mention of this nor any outrage by the announcer, and she's perfectly fine by the next segment. (iMPACT 07/12/2007)

15 years ago, they would have chanted "USA ! USA !" to support Nak, who would have brought a US flag to the ring.

Raven is great. Come on, Honaga was en excellent sleazy heel worker. Loved his stuff with Liger. My boy (Jim Barnett impression here)... would be Sambo Asako. Fat judo guy from the early days of FMW. Took stupid bumps and was doing stuff he really shouldn't do (but I won't spoil anything here), played Onita's understudy of sorts. He sadly slowly died of diabetes years later.

The Schiavone podcast episode about Heenan is a must-hear.

I had forgot about this show (well, no, but I wish), which was the blow-off of Lioness takeover. Well, the dream match between Yoshida & Toyota was a disapointment back then with Toyota (from my distant memories) being on auto-pilot. The main event was Lioness being Lioness and Ayako, like you said, throwing bombs and whatnot and this was kind of a mess. I think I checked out for good then, I believe I didn't buy more ARSION tapes after that point.

Ah ah ah !

Hayes was probably drunken. You know the minute Trip is in power, Hayes is a goner.

The famous "goodbye" to Gorilla on Nitro was pretty though to watch too. But Bobby basically evokes only smiles and laughs. What is better than that ?