El-P

You almost make me want to check that out.

D.O.A. Because the Attitude era was also about Brian Lee & the Harris boyz feuding with LOD 2000. (and before that, of course, those immortal matches against the Boricuas, aka "let's totally ruin four good PR workers" and the Nation)

Wow. Sucking at his job in WWE really paid off then.

Who the fuck is Jonathan Coachman anyway ?

Fingers crossed and fuck the crab ! Babyface comeback incoming ! Hang in there !

AJ Styles vs Kazarian (X Division title - TNA 06/09/04) WIth the debut of Impact, TNA seems to give a brand new focus to the X division with AJ Style as the new ace, which is a smart decision. By making the X-div title "as important" as the world title (this was the main-event of the first PPV post Impact) with their best worker and former world champ as the ace, it gives a lot of credibility to the part of the product that is very distinctive from WWE. The six-sided ring was also an idea, if nothing else, and the announcers did a good job explaining how it changed the in-ring strategy (more difficult to get to the ropes, more sides to create offense etc...). Kazarian has come a long way since his horrible stint in 2003, working heel helped, but he also paces himself a lot more and does less stupid flippy-floppy sequences. His execution and selling is better too. Excellent match, with AJ dominating the first part with better speed and better understanding of his opponent's mistakes until Kazarian took the upper hand with one of his trademark spot which requires a dubious setup (the slingshot DDT, here on the apron which looked brutal), but they did they best to make it look good. They kinda lost the crowd during a Kazarian resthold and never got them back, which is too bad since they showed good pacing and selling of the exhaustion. Worked kinda japanese style toward the end, with stiff offense. They never went overboard with finisher kickouts either. Really nice work overall, with tons of snappy and spectacular offense, which is what the X-div is supposed to be about. The finish was totally blown though, with AJ overshooting his dive, Kazarian seemingly kicking out and the ref still counting three. Totally confusing, looked like crap and really ruined the end of what was an excellent match. Still, Kazarian showed a lot of improvement and AJ Styles as the ace of the X div brings both credibility and promises of excellent matches to come. Well, with Kid Kash (and Dies... Dallas) attacking him post-match, maybe not so much.

Lame. And funny.

I'll give you my professional point of view on how bad it is when I get to watch it.

Except it's Petiot. Which is not as easy to pronounce for foreign speaker. io = eeo. As far as Benoit goes, they usually got the "oit" part allright, since "wah" does the trick. But the "Ben" was never ever pronounced right. Sounded like Bènoit. Which doesnt exist.

The Lady Balls era. (yeah, Stephy's "feminism")

Wait, what ? I thought Del Rio was married with children.

John Cena Randy Orton Bray Wyatt The Miz Baron Corbin Dolph Ziggler Alberto Del Rio Demon Kane Holy shit, the roster of boredom of doom.

To summarize : "These are pro-wrestlers. These aren't sport-entertainment guys. These are characters that you couldn't fucking create if you were doing a skit."

This. And *everybody* knew he was doped like hell.

Jeff Jarrett vs Raven vs AJ Styles vs Chris Harris vs Ron Killings (King of the Mountain match for the NWA Title) TNA, the company with the idiotic concepts. Well, at least they try. On paper, it looks like a gigantic clusterfuck. In actuality, it was a spectacular clusterfuck, in the best sense of the word. I have no idea how they managed to make it work, as it's basically a deathmatch, a penalty box match, a falls count anywhere match and an inverted ladder match all in one. And yet, they did. Jarrett, Raven & Styles particulary shine here, although Harris brings goods to the table and Killings, the token NWA champ for a week (despite not being anywhere close to the other four in term of standing to me, not to mention work) does his share. The way they use the penalty box is quite interesting, with people inside either putting together an alliance (Raven & Jeff) while in other case it gets into a mini cage fight. Tons of insane spots, but since the goal is first to get a pinfall, then to climb the ladder once you're allowed too, there's a sense of purpose and urgency and several differents goals at the same time in a limited space, and it works quite well (as opposed to all those overrated ladder matches or Money in the Bank match where you get insane spots for no reason with people not even trying to get the prize). It really shouldn't be as good as it is, the only real drawback to me is that they had to work really quick pinfalls, which, between main-eventers, gets a bit transparent, Survivor Series style. Apart from that, very strong effort from all involved and a spectacular and fun gimmick match. Jarrett wins thanks to the guitar, but at this point, it's kinda expected and almost comical (Jarrett looked good in the match, so no criticism). (Russo did one screwy intervention not wanting to give Jarrett the belt after he got a pinfall, but apart from that was pretty much irrelevant to the match) (no idea who is that slutty girl showing up at the end, Tenay saying he hadn't seen her in years)

Cracked me up.

Did the WWE also trademark the word "petty" ?

In cycling it's just... well, cycling.

TNA from 2004. And the promotion post awful-show with the ICP garbage brawl has been mostly pretty damn good (which is why I don't review it. I don't review good pro-wrestling promotions as a whole), despite Russo as a babyface character in which he's just as terrible but less obtrusive for obvious reasons (plus he wasn't booking by this point I believe). But yeah, pretty good stuff. They even manage to salvage what has been a terrible idea thus far, the American X Cup (well, it was not a terrible idea on paper, but the work of the first two had been pretty damn bad thanks to shitty indierrifc work, including by Juvy who's thankfully been replaced) with a brand new Team Canada which is now a fine heel faction. (Amazing how Bret Hart manage to make Canada a viable heel identity) Erik Watts still is pretty worthless, I have to say though.

SummerSlam : Roman Reigns vs Brock Lesnar - Urine sample on a pole. Make it happen. (can we have Lance Armstrong as a guest referee ?)

So, that MMA fight was a great idea, uh ? Hilarious.

You don't say. Won't happen until a new "Golden Age". Which probably never come at this rate. Not anytime soon anyway.

Final Deletion wasn't good. It was great (for reasons mentionned above). The fact WWE is copying it 6 days after it was showed demonstrates (if need be) how petty and uncreative these people are. What is their current big idea BTW ? Oh, yes, the stuff they did 12 years ago, which failed, with a McMahon on each side and more GMs. Genius.

Raven vs AJ Styles (NWA title match) So, Raven & AJ Styles decide they have a WCW Saturday Night circa 92 main event, with fat Raven working like Ole Anderson if Ole was a terrific seller (the knee, the knee !) and was feeding and bumping hard. Seriously, Raven's work is excellent here, relentless on working on the arm/shoulder of AJ with crisp stuff. I never thought that he would actually peak in 2003/2004, he's just an old-school guy with strong psychology. Since he's kinda turned back heel, he tries to cheat by using powder and it backfires. Screwy finish with a fake La Parka, which was kinda lame but at the same time protected Raven (see, AJ Styles didn't kick out of his finisher like Jarrett did in 2003) and was poetic justice since it was Chris Harris under the hood. Really good match and one of the strongest Raven performance as far as pure solid work goes.

What killed Brock to me was when the whole "Suplex City" became a marketing argument and his matches became basically a bunch of suplexes for the audience to count along. Like everything, when something organic turns into a gimmick, it usually turns into crap.