El-P

Of course. Although it would simply be a lesser version of their NJ classic, for obvious reasons. But that's the way to go. I guess the Indian market is more important than the Japan market (although they raid Japan now, which sucks for small companies like Stardom). Yeah, but that match was the epitome of Simmons not being a main event player and Barbarian being a JTTS pushed in the main and failing to deliver since he's just there to do a job. This felt like so not a World Title match. Just like Orton vs Mahal.

Mid-card guys until they get injured or fired. Bulldog doesn't go to WCW, doesn't get injured on the Warrior trap door... maybe doesn't do that much drugs.

Agius & Chereau rule. I have to state it every damn time. Nakamura vs Doph Ziggler. Well. Way to not showcase Nak at all. Average, fakely epic borefest. Ziggler is working at a snail pace. Wonder if that's a Mutah tribute or he's just emulating Paul Roma circa92 at this point. Anyway. Nak is coasting. Glad for him he got the money, because he's not doing a third of what he used to do in NJ. Probably saves his body. Good for him. That being said, his WWE story to me is the Sami Zayn match before Mania last year. Still, he should be in the main event scene yesterday (especially THESE DAYS). Instead of that, we get Ziggler dominating 80% of the match yet not being able to finish his opponent. No one wins. Tag team match ? WWE comedy. You know, I do have some other things to do. Like, I dunno. Search for leaks or something. Anything more interesting. Sami Zayn vs Baron Corbin. I still don't see shit in Corbin. He's ok at best, has no charisma, terrible hair. Still, this was a good, solid match because Sami is your regular Ricky Steamboat here. Totally worked around that *big stiff* (I'm so vintage, hell, I have an AOL email adress) with his excellent offense and great selling. Made Corbin look better than ever. Still. Switch Corbin with your generic big guy with no charisma and you get the exact same match. Switch Sami Zayn with some scrub and you get a shitty, boring, nothing match. Well, that's what we used to call a *carry job* back in the days, ya know. They should totally push Sami to the moon. Don't tell me he wouldn't sell merchandise to the kids. Nor draw women' attention. Nor sell tickets to the hardcores. He's a great worker and terrific babyface. Charlotte & Becky & Naomi vs Tamina & Natalya & Carmella. So Charlotte is a babyface now ? Damn. What's the point ? Kinda kills the momentum she had as a heel. Naomi's entrance is still glorious. The match isn't. Carmella is legit awful. Tamina doesn't have a purpose. Wow. What happened to the women having killer matches ? Charlotte & Becky want their talented opposition back, they can't do everything by themselves. AJ Styles vs Kevin Owens. Funny to see this get no love here. I thought this was a great match. Built into a sprint which goes faster and harder. Some brutal spots including that awful suplex on the ring apron. I love how they cut to a woman in the crowd who was very clearly saying "What ! The Fuck !". Got into greatness territory with the knee injury. Finish was creative. AJ Styles is a top ten GOAT contender (and no, I'l not saying that because of a few years in NJ and WWE, going through TNA is enlightement as far as overlooked workers, and I've not even seen his ROH stuff). Wyatt feud. Ah ah, like I care one bit. That Indian Guy vs Das Black Hole. Like it's been said, Mahal is not even bad enough to be entertaining. He's mediocre at very best but dull. Orton on the other hand manage to fuck up a guy's neck, that great worker that he is. Bad, boring match, although Mahal made Orton look good in comparison. You don't say. I probably had some sort of odd foreshadowing back then. Or the WWE is trolling ME ! And really, I understand the Indian market stuff yaddi yaddi yadda, but at the end of the day, who fucking care ? I have no WWE stock. This is a bad deal. It felt like Ron Simmons vs Barbarian, only way worse. And really, despite the Indian part being most, if not all, of it, no one can ignore the steroid part and the terrible message it sends. The Wellness Policy is once again looking like a complete joke. And really, Mahal's skin is disgusting. Who wants to inject chemicals into their body to look like this ? Repulsive. So there. "That Indian Guy" is WWE champ. From bad to bad. Probably won't last very long though. Well, there was one great match at least, but otherwise a pretty bad show. I have kept Takeover on the side. Probably a good idea.

Hard Justice 2006 Tag Titles Match AJ Styles & Christopher Daniels vs. LAX The fact it was rough around the edge only made it better to me. Who care about tag legalities in 2006 ? Yeah, it was a bit messy at times and yes Hernandez is still green, but it came off as a true struggle with two teams really hating each others. Spotty ? Yes. But damn good at being spotty. Excellent match. On the same show, Rhyno vs Samoa Joe vs Monty Brown in a Falls Count Anywhere match was quite the amazing brawl too.

That's a wretched card if I ever saw one. And I saw tons of them.

Well, you're listening to the wrong podcast if you don't have a fondness for WCW bullshit, because half of the fun of WCW was the bullshit. And I do love how Tony pulls no punches with the WCW bullshit while at the same time brings tons of interesting hindsight about the business at the time. He's also quite fair toward Meltz reporting (unlike office stooges like Pritchard who make it a gimmick of bashing "da dirtsheets") and fair toward the product (and his own biases) in general. And he seems to have the time of his life while not taking himself seriously one bit. I really enjoyed Schiavone a lot before (at his best, I have him above JR) but I really love the guy now. As far as Uncensored goes, gotta love the "buckethead" Anderson anecdote as well as the fact him and Heenan were actually pushing the "Uncensored" tagline as smart-asses because they knew they were actually being censored on the blood. Now that he's back in the realm, I would oh so love to see Schiavone do some stuff with KC. Probably would be more of your liking too (more serious stuff) while still being entertaining as all hell.

What undesirable directions ?

I don't care about ****** matches, the NXT tag team division, WWE Women having the best matches, English indie wrestling, G1 coming up, Lucha Underground coming back soon. The best thing in pro-wrestling in 2017 is Tony Schiavone's podcast.

Love sumo guys, for obvious reasons (no spoil on current basho, thank you fellow sumo fans). Taue doing the tsuppari attack always gets a pop from me. Meng did some sumo shit when he worked there (SWS I remember). Kitao was plain offensive.

So, he is gonna get bestendeavoured before the end of his contract ?

So, Meltz said Eva Marie was done with pro-wrestling. What a great stint. That was worth the time.

Ok, there you go. Here we are. You reached *that* moment. I admit I had to go back to some old sources to remember exactly what happened there. Since you're watching a best-off comp, you don't even know about the Ryo Miyuki debacle that went on in January. The story is, Miyuki was a tall, athletic, fairly good looking girl whom Rossy Ogawa wanted to push the hell out of despite being a total rookie with zero experience and… in-ring potential. Aja was opposed to that apparently. Miyuki's debut performance was embarrasing. And then we get that shoot-angle that turned into a shoot, with Aja basically "leaving" the promotion along Miyuki (yeah, makes all the sense in the world), hence letting Yoshida getting destroyed by LCO. On the same show, you had the infamous Ohmukai vs Miyuki "job-of-doom" where Miyuki shows up in street clothes and does the job in one minute (because she doesn't want to work here anymore, ya know). Thing is, Aja and Miyuki really did leave the promotion that day and never returned back. So there, Aja was pissed at Rossy because of his booking and Miyuki was a failed rookie debacle that ended up sucking in GAEA a few months later, then went on to work for DDT for a while. A month later, this was Fukawa's retirement show, which was quite fitting as ARSION as a cool little upstart company was no more. A few months later, Lioness Asuka would get the keys to the kingdom and would effectively kill the company by doing what she does : putting herself over everybody and garbaging up the product. By the end of the year, ARSION was going the way of what I'd call back then, a zombi promotion, with the depressing Carnival 2001 show. I think it went one until 2003 when Yumiko Hotta, of all people, took over and the promotion turned into AtoZ. To me, 2001 is where I simply stopped giving a fuck. It had been my all-time favourite pro-wrestling in 98 & 99. 2000 was rougher with Fukawa's injury but Hamada's rise to the top was cool. The Miyuki debacle, Aja's departure and Lioness taking over put the nails in the coffin in 2001

Damn. It's not a matter of kayfabe anymore. It's a matter of knowing way too fucking much about these people, especially their worst traits that emerge through social networks. Keep just a wee bit of mystery, will you ? (and no, I don't mean clean up you phones either)

She should work an Azealia Banks gimmick. Kill chicken in her closet, make Trump supporting tweets and insult entire countries. Seriously, she even got the right last name !

#dumbasfucktwitterfeud You know, some days I do yearn for the older times...

Without Shawn pushed as the main guy in DX and Nash & Hall in WCW, Trip never get passed the mid-card, it's as simple as this. The New Age Outlaws and Chyna were more over than he was months after he got the DX leader position. He only got there by SummerSlam working with Rocky in the ladder match. No main event push, no Stephy angle, no son-in-law, no 15 years of suck and boredom on top. Doesn't matter if Mr. McMahon doesn't get the "Bret screwed Bret" stuff, the anti-authority nature of Austin was still there by mid 1997. Before Bret left, Austin had already stunned JR if I recall right. The seeds were there. And Rocky still happens too, and working with Bret certainly beats the tepid HHH matches of the Summer of 98 (yeah, I know they were super heated despite being tepid, but that's neither here nor there, Rocky didn't need HHH to get over). Oh, and of course, Russo doesn't get to do half the shit he did because Bret wasn't gonna allow it. And Micheals doesn't get his "great" comeback stint as a living legend in the 00's with all those overrated self-consious epics and those DX revival shit. Damn Vince, why didn't you pick Bret ?

That bump was sure worth it....

More KC goodness with Honky Tonk Man covering his journey to SummerSlam 88. It's really an interesting dive into how business worked back then, especially how Vince functions (the part where he tries desperately to sell HTM as a babyface for sheer merchandise reasons echoes with some familiar modern situations…) and treats his talent. HTM goes pretty much in details about the whole refusing to job to Savage, and again it's quite interesting to grasp how he was considering his whole stint and how things worked then.

Sato sucked by 2000. And KAORU was never very good (the Aja match is like a miracle and Aja working her magic). So there. Oz Academy was really GAEA at this point.

I'd rather watch Edge than just any of these guys save for Koko (especially in Memphis).

Ding ding ding. End of match. Your winner is.

Cody Rhodes is like the Randy Orton of his dynasty.

Not really. There have always been "workrate" (before it turned into an ugly word in the mouth of our brand new crowd of retrohipsters) territories and promotions where doing as little as possible wasn't gonna fly. Hence the differences between Memphis, Mid-south, Mid-Atlantic, AWA, New York, 80's New Japan etc... Doing what is necessary, depending on the context and what you want to achieve. Actually, Cena and Micheals were having those self-conscious epics, finishers kick-outs burning borefest way way before the #evilindydarling came in and "changed the style". And honestly, I'd take a stupid and ridiculous modern spotfest over a fake overdrawn "epic" anyday.

Arn Anderson. The best ever to me.

Listen to that sound ? That's me marking the fuck out already (Weeds fan). Awesome Kong to boot ? I'm there. This is gonna be glowious.