El-P

Damn, in France I'd call you a "centriste".

With a guy dressed as a Tiger doing lucha spots. Kinda. Pro-wrestling is ridiculous. It sure is! And that's why it's great. Let's not kid ourselves. Last match I've enjoyed a lot (thought it was legit great actually) is an AJ Styles vs Abyss cage match from TNA 2005. Abyss. In my mind, a truck-driver (actually, a lawyer in kayfabe) with an S&M fetish badly playing a monster.

I know. UWF 1.0 still has lots of pro-style stuff like dropkicks and shit, only UWF 2.0 really found the way.

With a guy dressed as a Tiger doing lucha spots. Kinda. Pro-wrestling is ridiculous.

I never cared one bit about martial arts. Like, at all. I understood shoot-style immediately and it remains the most beautiful pro-wrestling style I've ever seen.

Actually, that's rather well put. Glad I'm neither here nor there though.

I also said lucha isn't actually "hard to get into". To me it's mostly all contextual. People have made good points about it like I said.

The way facts are presented in the title comes off as a bit whiny to me. Very "us vs them" mentality. It sets a predecent even before the discussion begins I think. Not that it should excuse "blah, lucha just sucks" kinda answers though. Did I ever say "lucha is inferior" ? I don't think I have. Plenty of people have expressed plenty of perfectly reasonnable ideas and conceptions of why they don't really get into it in this thread.

About immaturity, no offense Grim, but the very title of the thread came off pretty whiny to me. As it's often the case with lucha being discussed in comparison to Japan. Poooor lucha. Must be some kind of "higher art" in pro-wrestling that people not willing to "put the effort in" (please) just can't understand. I'm sorry, but that tone is a bit of a regular occurence when lucha is discussed, and as Charles mentionned, the fact purist lucha fans sometime have that kinda "high horse" attitude talking down to the puroresu-loving bozos who must be Evil Meltzer disciples and post-colonialist lazy pro-wrestling fans not able to understand a culture not permeated by US tropes. Whereas, as it been pointed many times, including by Goc, who no one will accuse me of agreeing with a whole lot usually, there are a lot of common elements between lucha and good ol' rasslin'. What is more foreign ? A bunch of clear defined heels and faces in colorful costumes with beatdowns and comebacks or a bunch of undistinctive japanese guys in black trunks, black books, no kneepads doing some bizarre back and forth, sudden quick selling strikes and odd looking selling ? There are reasons why, most of them contextuel. But Lucha ain't "hard to get". I said myself I never really "got it", but not in the way of "this is too foreign, this is too odd". Just in a "this isn't really drawing me completely", despite having seen some great old-school bloodletting. I would point out to a lot a stuff that have been talked bout, like announcing, production, presentation etc...

I couldn't stand Mundo in S1 either. The heel turn and the Taya connection in S2 did a lot of good. And I wasn't the biggest Puma fan either in S1. Fenix was a much better technico. Again, I warmed up to Puma toward the end of the season and in S2, with the great Muertes feud.

1A - 2B Check mate. Lucha Underground won.

Negro Casas really didn't showcase very much crossover appeal when he showed up in New Japan to me. He mostly looked like a fish out of water much like Barry Windham in All Japan a few years before, at a time he was arguably the best active US wrestler (yeah better than Flair). Those luchadors from the late 70's showing up against Fujinami on the other hand, they just blended easily and brought tons to the style that would become the "junior" style of NJ, which would evolve into the lucharesu, US cruiserweights, and X-div workers of the world. So, there. Lucha Libre may be my favourite pro-wrestling I don't actually like watching very much.

At least I learned that Mexico wasn't in the western world. Learnin' everyday about geopolitics thanks to good ol' pseudo intellectual pro-rasslin' debates. Joshi ? Blah. Who cares ? Women and creepy fans. Yeah, creepy fans (like that Mick Santa guy). Because those good'ol' boys from the South during the glory days of Memphis were great people ya know, chanting against faggots and raising ol' Glory. Hey, Trump is your new president, so I guess gotta turn everything into low-brow politic and moral arguments now. Lucha is fine. It's surprisingly still the most purely "popular" form of wrestling and the most "hipster" as well, thanks to its aesthetics. Pro-wrestling is cheesy. Always will be. Hulk fucking Hogan, bro. But Lucha Libre is cool in a B-movie kinda way. There was even a lucha themed bar in Paris, despite having no lucha TV at all in the country. That's interesting to me. Probably why Lucha Underground works too, because it's so heavy on aesthetics.

This. Pretty much. I've been a fan for more than 25 years now. Never really *got* lucha libre. And never ever got *into* it. Probably never will at this point. Don't care anymore. LU rules though. (not Lucha) I know. And ?

Only watched Charlotte Flair (since when ?) vs Sasha Banks, since I couldn't care less about the rest (Rusev in a stupid angle in the pre-show with a complete tool, what a waste of talent). I thought it felt a little bit too choreographed after the opening matwork section, with both girls going through their dance. It did pick it up with the first serious submission. And that Sasha bump on the stairs from the apron was a thing of beauty. Then was very good. Ok, so first fall had a nice slow build into it and I didn't think the equalizer came too awkwardly. Then the final third picked up and the match got excellent, then great despite... stupid booking. Which made the figue-four kinda weak in a way, and Sasha taping out three seconds before the bell doesn't make sense. A babyface either faints or just doesn't give up at this point. Of course one could argue she couldn't imagine the referee would be a complete dick a la Gorilla Monsoon with this sudden death overtime, which reeks of favoritism and kinda makes the whole thing booked like Sasha was the heel (really, giving up three seconds before the bell, and having to still defend her title with overtime). That aside, that overtime was all kinda great, with the damn hardway adding a dramatic visual aspect. Sasha really grew as a babyface worker, although I really wish she had the opportunity to be all bitchy and mean again. Charlotte has improved so much on the facials and attitude that it makes up for some shaky execution at times (those low dropkicks), she really brought a lot in term of character (everything Randy Orton tried to be but never managed to in term of predatory tactics). She overdoes it a tad at time, but she's a lot of fun to watch react to the dynamics of the match. Very involving. The booking is kinda baffling really, with Charlotte beating Sasha on PPV *again*. At this rate, Charlotte will beat her father's title record in a matter of two years. Only other negative, did this crowd suck or what ? They were dead for most of the match it seems. Did hurt the aura of the match, which deserved way better. Overall excellent, with a great final stretch. (despite the booking, but this company is useless on this matter anyway)

So that was the Third Face. How could I forgot ? But yeah. That elbowdrop on the concrete. Looked amazing but...

Well, I will watch Sasha vs Charlotte going 30 mn. If Rusev is on the card, I might watch him too.

Wait, what ? Tonight ? Charlotte vs Sasha ?

The one thing I hate more than the obligatory capitalistic fake-joy of the über consumption party know as Xmas is someone, anyone, using the following argument about *anything* : "You'll see when you'll have kids.". I deeply despise the social injunction of reproducing as much as the patronizing that goes with it, as if having kids was some kind of magic trick a human being was supposed to go through to have a purpose in life and understand whatever meaning of it. Fuck kids. Well, not litteraly of course… But you get the drift. So yeah. Fuck Xmas. And fuck you Mick Foley, you Xmas-tree masturbating Santa Claus look-alike creepo. There. There are no year end awards on PWO so you can stop competing for "most miserable person on the board" any time now. Considering the super enthousiastic posts I make about great matchs from TNA 2005, NXT Takeovers, Charlotte vs Sasha stuff and other random really good stuff from WWE PPV (including Miz matches), plus my undying love for Lucha Underground for which I created a thread by my own self so I could deverse the LU luv on the board, I'm pretty sure I wasn't near the top of that list anyway. (And again, not having kids doesn't make people miserable. The things I plan to do next year : whatever the fuck I feel like doing. Yay !)

The one thing I hate more than the obligatory capitalistic fake-joy of the über consumption party know as Xmas is someone, anyone, using the following argument about *anything* : "You'll see when you'll have kids.". I deeply despise the social injunction of reproducing as much as the patronizing that goes with it, as if having kids was some kind of magic trick a human being was supposed to go through to have a purpose in life and understand whatever meaning of it. Fuck kids. Well, not litteraly of course… But you get the drift. So yeah. Fuck Xmas. And fuck you Mick Foley, you Xmas-tree masturbating Santa Claus look-alike creepo. There.

And will Steve Austin work against Brock Lesnar this year ?

Wearing Christmas shirts in April is what made you think Mick Foley was fucking weird ? Mick Foley ? From the Nestea Plunge bump/hit me again in the head with a chair Shane or Rocky/IWA Japan King of the Deathmatch tournament/Hell in the Cell death spots fame ? A Christmas Shirt in April ?

The New Three Faces of Foley : creepy feministstalker, awkward X-mas fetischist and what else already ? Seriously, who gives a flying fuck if Foley loves Xmas or theme parks ? People obsessing about Foley's idiosyncrasies are way more creepy, I'd say. For the record, fuck the holiday season, and Xmas especially. Really depressing period of the year.

Wow. What a terrific match. They had some excellent stuff together the previous year, but this was incredible. Battling outside was not exactly a change of pace since Jarrett & Waltman began the exact same way the previous match. However here it looked focused, stiff and built to that amazing spot with the door. Awe inspiring bump from AJ. AJA is so great. Such an amazing worker. It's funny how people seem to discover that now that he's in WWE (and since NJ is evil, ya know). Watching back early TNA, AJ Styles was already a great worker in 2003. Abyss has carried himself as quite the game piece of luggage. Bring him a shit opponent (Jeff Hardy), he'll do a shit match. Bring him a great worker, chances are you'll get something very good, maybe even great, like this. And he does bring his A-game in term of pacing and doing smart stuff too. So many great things about this match, how it slowly built, how they smartly set up gimmick spots, how they didn't overused the cage (especially after an entire PPV of cage matches, with a few good moments too like Chris Daniels vs Elix Skipper, a 2/3 of Dustin Rhodes vs Booby Roode, the last half of Team Canada vs AMW and even a decent little fake Wargame including Sean Waltman, Monty Brown and the NAO facing off and building tension) but when they did use it made it important and memorable. Even the thumbtacks spots were well teased and executed. Great match, terrific performance from AJ, Abyss at his best (that big lumbering sado-machistic trucker pretending he's a monster finally grew on me with good stuff like this) MOTYC for 2005. That's two for AJ Styles thus far too, for anyone keeping score.

Right now, as I'm going through 2005 TNA : Jeff Hardy. Easily one of the worst all-around worker I've ever seen. Not one redeeming quality about him at that point. Awful looking offense, shit selling, sloppy on all level, zero "character work", dull promo, dumb as fuck garbage work, terrible pseudo "artistic" look, idiotic nickname.