El-P

Sounds pretty rough. Hopefully he makes a good recovery. It also kinda amazes me that Bagwell is 42. In a way it's not surprising since he was on TV forever as a youngster, but still.

Well, I guess for the ROH crowd it can work since it seems like the entire idea of the promotion is jerking off about snowflakes (I realize I may be several years behind on this). Doesn't mean it's a good idea as an absolute though.

Makes the entire show look like shit though in retrospect. And Steve Austin kinda like a dork. Oh, the irony.

Davey is just revolutionizing the business. I'm waiting for someone to come up the concept of ending shows with an in-ring roundtable discussion with wrestlers and fans (those willing to pay $100 for the experience of course) where everyone discusses and critiques the night's performance. Where's Mike Oles when you need him ?

Hum... GAEA was more like WCW. Veterans on top, good young workers undercard, fun big shows with big names working mediocre main events, and Nitro matches on TV. Except Chiggy, this match was essentially a JWP match, with the same kind of brawling you'd see there from Oz.

Trope I can't stand : bringing in a masked guy usually called "Executionner" and trying to sell him as a true menace. When in fact, every masked guy called "Executionner" ever was a jobber.

Brock Lesner is the Hulk Hogan of MMA: he took it out of the smoke filled rooms to major arenas. John Ah ah ah.

None. Last promotion I followed regularly was ARSION, via tape buying, which was expensive and slow. I stopped in 2002 or so. Haven't followed anything since. Next one.

In the "Overrated spotfest" category.

Pretty much. As soon as Lex gets the belt and turns heel, the first challenger is Simmons, fresh off.... doing nothing of note after the Doom split. Enforcers vs Young Pistols - WCW 91.08.03 The more I watch Zbyszko, the more I think he's underrated. Of course he stalled, but when he worked, he was really solid. Here it brings quite a bit to the table in term of movez actually. This match is both really good and really frustrating. Really good because you feel it will give time to developp, as they switch a few heel/face in peril dynamics before settling to the face in peril phase, and the work is, of course, super solid. Then the Enforcers begin to kill Tracy's right leg, and it builds and builds.... until the referee stops the match. With a hot tag and a nice finishing sequence, this would have been a very good to excellent match. As it is, it does a good job selling the Enforcers as a team that can fuck you up, but it's also the sign that the Pistols weren't going to be pushed much anymore. The new gimmick really killed their momentum. Plus it's not like Young Pistols sounded a lot less southern that the previous gimmick which the people loved. Too bad for Steve and Tracy. Don't know why Dusty didn't get behind them after being one of the few really hot act of 1990.

The thing is, GAEA produced shit in term of rookies after the initail "fab four", because Chiggy was such a gigantic dick. And Satomura followed the lead. Most girls just quit after a few months.

At first, Chiggy maybe was thinking about building toward the future somewhat. By 1998/99, she realized that nostalgia was the way to go, and she went full bore into the nWo mode with old women on top to sell big shows, and it was kept that way afterward. Onita is just another bird alltogether, I agree, but it wasn't the same context either. He wasn't a huge star returning, he built it from scratch, and FMW was alla bout Onita at first. GAEA was a lot more than just Chiggy. In the end, both just washed their hands on what would happen with the company they founded. Chiggy could have keep on promoted with (yikes) Satomura on top (not something I ever would want to watch), and although it wouldn't have drawn like it did before, the brand was still well established at the time, and it would have helped the scene quite a bit.

I've been watching quite a bit of post-ECW promotions, mostly to check out guys like Funk, Sabu, Raven, Douglas, Lynn, Corino, Candido mixing up with a few newer guys from the indies. It strikes me that 2 out of 3 were backed up by pornographers, XPW by Rob Black & Lizzy Borden, and 3PW by Jasmine Saint Clair. Interesting when you think about what kind of image ECW projected as far as women goes. MLW was by far the most fun of the 3 promotion and had the less amount of crap, although Steve Williams was disheartning to watch in 2002. XPW was by far the worst, with shitload of retarded garbage stuff that I didn't even watched (life is short). In the bunch, some really IWA Japan like Terry Funk matches with Corino and Sabu, one cool Funk vs Jerry Lawler match, one "Funk loses his mind and slaughters his arm" match with Douglas, all in all Funk was clearly still the icon of these post-ECW promotions. Douglas could still go, working especially hard on occasions and being a much better heel than HHH still at this point despite his age and limitations (Douglas was obviously very banged up). He was however overplaying his character pretty badly on promos. Sabu was still Sabu, working better in MLW than in 3PW or XPW for some reasons. Found out that Joey Matthews was working a fun heel character at the time, which was much better than the Hardy-like flying babyface from late ECW. You can see Candido and Tammy's bodies decline in the span of two years, amazing what drugs can do to you. In 2000 Tammy was still looking great, by 2002 she had put on quite a bit of weight, while Candido probably stopped the roids and got a bit fat around the waist. Dark years for these two, although their work was still really good. All those guys really suffered from the closing down of WCW, as they were too good to work in shitholes like XPW with terrible garbage bleeders or in ECW tributes shows (what basically 3PW was) before a few hundred people at Viking Hall.

You Can't Powerbomb Kidman style of tropes are the most annoying. Jerry Lynn has the exact same type of annoying counter spot. It looks great, and is cool to see the first time around. Except he does it every time. It's You Can't Shoulderblock Jerry Lynn in the Stomach While You're on the Other Side of the Ropes. He'll jump above you and drop the leg on your neck while your head is sticking through the ropes. Great spot, except when everyone tries to shoulderblock Jerry Lynn when he's on the other side of the ropes. It's not nearly as annoying as Kidman's because it's a more regular spot, and the counter looks really cool, but still, it's pretty transparent that everyone is trying this shit with Lynn.

It's funny because even then ppl complained that it wasn't what it once was but joshi would kill now to be at the lvls they were in 05. AJW had been on the heavy death march since 03 so it wasn't a totall surprise when they collapsed, GAEA was still drawing well & putting on good shows so it came out of nowhere when they threw in the towell however. GAEA closed down when Chiggy decided she wanted to quit. Simple as that. Chiggy never saw GAEA has the future of joshi, it was always a vehicule for her own benefit, much like ONita with FMW. SHe could have keep on promoting GAEA, it was the number one joshi promotion. She just didn't care to. Ah, Chiggy, always the giving one. I began using "zombi fed" as early as 2000/2001 talking about JWP, NEO and Jd'. It was painfull to see joshi fell of a cliff so bad at the time. In a matter of a few years, it went from big events and a potential great future, to a bunch of mini-feds not being able to pack Korakuen Hall. ARSION was super exciting for 1 year and a half, then slowly slid then got sucked into Lioness claws and became just another z-fed. I never bothered to check out AtoZ, I taped out way before that.

Back then UFC wasn't a competition, WCW was. Well, they did advertise for WCW too with Billionnaire Ted skits and fake Diesel & Razor.

He was black ? Just a wild guess. Yeah, Reed as a Horseman in 90 instead of Sid would have been all kind of good. Perfect fit.

Yep. And Jackie Brown's script is great. Russo can't write a story that makes sense to save his life. Of course, After Jackie Brown, Tarentino's stock has dropped immensely with me, as I think both Kill Bill and Boulevard de la Mort are a complete waste, and Inglorious Bastards is half really good, half waste. And he was a terrible president at Cannes. I can't think of any big name cinematographic equivalent to Russo to be honest. Oh, yes I can, Shyamalan.

No.

Good match, and great angle. It's too bad the Quebecers didn't get a longer, more consistent run because they were one hell of a team. It's a fine little territorial war too, as it's Calgary's Harts vs Montreal's Rougeaus basically (Oulette was trained by Jacques). Post match angle is awesome, Owen was just great in finally bursting out of frustration (and he was right to boot, Bret was selfish). And of course, the immortal words : "I kicked your leg out of your leg."

Very boring rumble with bad timing and tons of filling up spots with midcarders without issues. Kwang and Sparky Thurman Plugg debuts, thrilling. The bright spots were Diesel running wild and getting a reaction, which pretty much saved his career in WWF, Jannetty throwing himself into Michaels for a few seconds, a cool exemple of long term continuity, and the final spot, which was really unexpected at the time. DiBiase on color was terribly bland, yet another role post wrestling he was not good at.

Aja kills Hotta. Great stuff.

It was kinda sad to see a huge star like Tenryu buried in a see of WWF heel midcarder. This guy would sold out 40.000 seats or so a few months later with Onita at Kawasaki Stadium, which is something no one in the US could be able to do at the same time. At 17 I thought the post-match angle was awesome. Looking back 20 years later, it's kinda retarded. Is that the first occurence of WWF using grand production to sell a flat out supernatural angle ?

Loved those jobbers with pun names. Paul Lee. Jim Boss.

That cracked me up pretty good.