El-P

I had been a big fan of his first heel turn, and wasn't thrilled to watch him as a face. Not that I knew he was a dickhead in real life, but things never clicked to me with Shawn as a babyface in 95/96. He was just a natural heel.

If this was the standard, there would be no babyfaces in wrestling.

Agreed. Shawn was an asshole in real life, and great wrestling characters are an extension of what you really are. Shawn as a face could work for a minuet or two because he was flashy. But his personnality was just repulsive, he was a whiner, a cheater, a manipulative little jack-off bitch. That's why I also think his best run as far as character goes remains Summer/Fall of 1997. He was much more fun as a heel than a face.

In the same vein, I hate TV matches where they sell like they took a beating after 3 minutes of spots.

Flair looks like he's about to die. I can't believe this shit is on TV and people are actually paid to put this crap together. This stuff was old and had overstayed its welcome 13 years ago, and Flair, Hogan and Sting are still on TV along with Bischoff, while Russo writes the show. TNA is the worst promotion ever.

He's really the face equivalent of terry Funk drunk selling or Dick Murdock's antics, or Hennig's überbumping. Bret Hart was a much more realistic seller than Steamboat. Best selling ? Kawada. Hokuto.

I was less thinking in terms of bumps but rather in terms of Cac asking Vader to potato him.

I don't care much for any comeback that consist of no-selling. Lawler dropping the strap equals Warrior shaking the ropes to me.

Mechanically perfect, no doubt about that, but not exactly graceful. Graceful to me is Jinzei Shinzaki, Misawa at his best, Barry Windham. Kyoko was pretty graceful actually. Yeah, I'm glad it turned out fine ! I thought I remembered that. You are the one who probably broke the news to me too. I'm not at all the kind who drools over baby's pictures, but since this is Kyoko, I can't help but find this adorable. Kyoko always had the nicest smile anyway. She's kinda the Kim Deal of joshi.

These are the small aesthetic things I enjoyed in US wrestling. It fit the character too.

I would have never use the words "graceful" and "Kaoru Ito" in the same sentence, although she was a workhorse. She always looked pretty bad anyway, and always had pretty terrible looking outfit, so I guessed she could only get better as she aged. Well, I was wrong. What you describe does seems depressing. Kyoko had a happy-go-lucky fat woman thing going on. Didn't she had a kid too BTW at some point, or am I totally out of the loop ?

Onita, Onita, Onita, Onita and Onita. You can mix in some Chigusa Nagayo at any point. (yeah, I'm petty, but I'm disapointed not to have thought of Loss' answer before he did)

Best line on this board in a long time. So very true.

That's not a structure, that's Hogan being a cunt.

Flair vs Sting was sad at the last Nitro, 10 years ago. I can't even fathom how pathetic it is in 2011. Retire already.

From memory I'd say Sting, but I haven't seen the Dustin matches in ages. The Cac matches are too much Cac wankery.

Oh yes he does.

Agreed. It is just sad to watch him at this point, it's obvious the guy is in pain. Sure, he still had the psychology, so he could get away with doing simple stuff that were getting over, but really, it's no fun to watch. From all acounts, Andre was miserable the few last years of his life. Past 88-89, Andre makes me sad.

Chris Benoit in the WWE was a sad parody of what he'd been in the 90's though. I had cooled down on his work as early as 2001-2002 (blame NJ), although I still thinks he was a great wrestler at points.

Oh, I have no doubt they took stuff. I mean, Hokuto couldn't have possibly stand on her two feet with some kind of medication. What I'm saying is I doubt they got fucked up on pills like the guys in the US, as we haven't seen any of them drop dead or fall off a cliff because of it. From what I knew some of them were pretty hard partier, LCO, Oz if I remember right. Manami Toyota's addiction was pachinko though. Mariko Yoshida was exactly what she looked like, smart and healthy. Well, you could say that about women in general. Hasn't Kyoko lost some weight after her sickness ? What happened to Ito ? TSW ? Shit, that brings me back 10 years ago.

Considering the abuse they have taken working a workrate heavy style, yes, most of them have aged pretty gracefully when compared to their male counterpart. A lot less drugs and booze I guess.

Perverse self-cosplaying.

Word. She looked stunning one year ago, she really doesn't need to put the weight back on.

Mostly a garbage worker whose best stuff was falling of high places. As a regular worker, he kinda sucked, with an awkward indyrific offense he seemed to have borrowed from Nova. Thought it was a good idea to imitate Goldberg's spear despite looking tall and gangly, hence the shittiest regular spear ever. Was funny with Christian as goofballs, but sucked on promos whenever it was supposed to be serious. Stupid facials... hum... don't care for him very much.

The Rock : couldn't stand his in-ring work despite the great promos. I revisited him during the GWE poll, and became a fan. Riki Choshu : when I got into puroresu, everything was about the AJ heavies, and how the NJ guys sucked, especially Choshu and his boring lariat/scorpion combo, no-selling the UWF-I guys and such. When I watched entire TV seasons of NJ, I became a fan very quickly of his style and the NJ heavy style as a whole. But Choshu in particular appealed to me. It was simple, basic, intense, couldn't get old.