El-P

We should make every thread ever about how Randy Orton is a fucking bore. Yeah, it would get old quick. But not quite as dull as a Randy Orton match or promo or angle.

He already is, by the way of 15 years of dull as fuck matches, promos, feuds and terrible acting.

The thing is, you can think whatever you want about the Young Bucks, but they manage to *draw* and *make money* out of their act. I mean, Rip Rogers was a guy doing jobs on WCW TV and he was taking really stupid bumps during those matches too. As much as I do agree with him on some aspects, there's plenty of stupid as fuck work in WWE too, it's not just #evilindies. It kinda reeks of "old man yells at cloud" a bit...

That's a pretty accurate sump-up of the first three years. Chama (Ohmukai) showed so much promised in 1998 but she never became what she could have. Futagami switching to GAMI worked wonders for her character wise (and she is GAMI in real life) but the match quality suffered a lot because of it. Candy had a great 1998 comeback but her back injury probably was too much to keep that high level of work. And her character got annoying. Tamada is someone who took a lot of crap back in the days but she was more hit and miss and still delivered nice work at points. Ayako becoming ace was a nice cap-off of her… two years career (amazing when you think of it!) and for all the talk of her being overpushed because of her name early on, she really took the ball and ran with it with her mega push and at the end of 2000 there was no doubt she had earned every bit of it and it was the right choice. Yoshida was still the best and coolest wrestler on earth too. Ah, 2001, the beginning of the TV shows There's a famous power play debacle at the beginning of the year. I have to watch that stuff back at some point. Good memories. Really enjoying this thread.

This is what I thought too.

Both very good matches. The tag team match was actually excellent and what bothered me the most was the ridiculous and dated use of some random amazon-looking women to "neutralize" Gail Kim (who took a terrific bump from the top rope). I guess it was supposed to be Jackie Gayda before she left as she got pregnant, it would have at least pay off an otherwise totally useless stint (which seems to sum up Gayda's entire pro-wrestling career). Yes, they didn't respect the tag legalities at the very end but it wasn't that bad, plus the finish was exactly what it should have been with a great feel-good moment. Steiner was all business and worked very well with Joe. Nice psychology and build, too bad the lead to the finishing spot was indeed blown, which made the ending kinda odd, the powerslam not being one of Joe's finisher. Still, Steiner showed he could absolutely work and deliver as late as 2006. Too bad they manage to fuck up the King of Mountain match. It was already the worst of the three, not nearly as good as the other ones, as if they forgot how to make the best and most fun use of the cage gimmick. Uneventful with long, boring crowd brawling sequences and Ron Killing wassuping his way into nothingness (really, why was he booked back in the main event at this point ?). It got better toward the end with some big spots, but the "creative" booking got in the way, including a particulary annoying Earl Hebner performance and totally screwy ending with some kind of Dusty finish. Kinda sad as it probably foreshadows the arrival of Russo on booking in the following months. This is the first true fail of D'Amore's booking era, and the fact it happened within their big annual gimmick match could not have been worse timing.

Cool to see those Jd' reviews in 2017. This was the ultimate cult-following (like, a dozen people including yours truly ) in joshi community lovers at the time. The Bloody & Yabushita were my two favourites, but I also enjoyed Sakai a whole lot and Fang was the unexpected underrated brawler.

Never heard it ever anywhere unless on WWE TV or what followed suit (WCW, TNA etc).

Sports-entertainment still sounds dumb as fuck, 30 years later. No one in real life says there's "sports-entertainment fan" or that they watch "sports-entertainment" or that they go to a "sports-entertainment show". It sounds completely idiotic.

It's not exactly a minor thing. It makes everything sounds ridiculous and, for me, unlistenable. It's like every *element* of the WWE is like WCW's infamous "international object". It's a brand new way of pro-wrestling being fake as all hell.

She looked Nitro Girl level dancer on those vignettes... Talking about crappy workers, whatever happened to Eva Marie ?

I'm glad I'm not on Twitter then.

Better that than the pity babyface push (cf Rey Jr.). And Eddie was a heel too anyway.

That new Lana gimmick seems like a terrible idea to begin with. No idea what the fuck they are thinking.

Ayako had come so far in just two years. This match truly was a coronation of sorts. Yoshida with the brand new punching ability was even cooler than before, if such a thing was possible. Asari looked better in ARSION than she ever did. Working a lot with Yagi probably helped.

Damn, I was just mentioning him and his fabulous daughters in the parent/children thread. Thoughts goes to Mari & Fabi, I loved to see them work along their father, who also played a part in training the girls in ARSION to the lucha style. That's how I remember Gran Apache.

KC's Back to the Territories with Bill Eadie is a major winner. Eadie is truly a charming guy, tells a lot of stories and holy shit does he look like he refuses to age. 69 years old ? Really ? Apparently they're gonna do Puerto Rico with Savio Vega, that's pretty cool. Can't think of anyone more suited. I'd love them to get Raymond Rougeau to do Montreal. This series has easily been the best and most consistent one they have released.

I was interested in seeing this match steeming from the most infamous promos of the last 10 years. Well. Although the "pipe bomb" was indeed quite the fresh stuff at the time (although obviously scripted in its shootiness and far from the nWo era feel of chaos), having Cena doing poop jokes during the contract negociation angle (which was going extremely well until then) was a rough reminder that I was watching a WWE corporate era stuff. Then, the infamous match. Damn. They spend a whole lot of minutes doing a whole not of nothing. Not the best execution. Finally they got it going, but then it's way overlong and most of all it's basically : yeah, a typical self-conscious epic with counters/finisher kick-out spamming. Which bores me to death. They lost me long before the actual ending. The obvious fact is that the booking and crowd heat is 50% of why it's so memorable. For once, they got it right (although the announcing was quite horrid, including Lawler saying that CM Punk leaving with the belt would make him simply "unemployed"), but of course knowing how the whole thing would end up (Kevin Nash, Punk jobbing to HHH) doesn't help the match at all in retrospect. So yeah, probably a "you had to be there" match. As it is, it's just nothing special and falls into the traps of every big WWE match the era.

He was not very good but he was not THAT bad. The one thing I truly hated bout him (apart from the stupid facials, the worst spear ever, the bad WWE comedy) was the fact he, along with the Hardies, brought the infamous "wasted-motion spots" style of working, with awkward body-movement spots requiring illogical bumping or positioning just to make them look "cool". As soon as Christian showed up in late 1998, it was obvious he was the worker though. Probably a nice guy from all acounts, but your typical overrated WWE-only worker and "legend" from the monopoly era.

Watch any Oz Academy (in GAEA mostly although Amano was a JWP girl like Oz) stuff from the mid to late 90's, and any JWP stuff from the same era. Amano was quite the good worker.

Flair sucked by 2003 and Michaels, well, the less said about his vaunted "great" comeback the better, so it's still a matter of too late to me. In 1995 I guess it would have been the best time considering their career, although I doubt it would have got as great as the Jarrett match.

Gran Apache & his daughters Mari & Fabi. A cool bunch. Gran Hamada & his daughter Ayako. What's better than this ?

Shane Douglas vs Ric Flair (old ECW fan talking). 5-6 years too late.

Ok, let's go for broke : short hair rules. I won't say anything more about this particular topic. About Roman Reigns. Well. He's better off with long hair.

Obsessing about men wrestlers' hair : cosmetic and presentation. Obsessing about women wrestlers' hair : sexism and creepiness. Not easy being a wrestling nerd.