MJH

The amount of folks I know who've broken a wrist by instinctively putting their hands out when they fall... I agree with Jingus.

He has no shot, but... the stomach claw, if done right, and the guy knows how to hit the nerves, is painful AS FUCK. I remember some twat in high school who'd do it to people and... yeah... you're not withstanding more than a few seconds of that. Ditto the trapezius one.

Not to ruin the mood with something dull but... I get my most enjoyment out of matches where I get what they're doing, it all makes perfect sense to me on a cerebral level (?), and they hit all the points I'm expecting and do so brilliantly.

Re: my comment, there's no actual quote as such, I've always thought it was people getting a bit carried away with the "Baba was actually very good" argument given how he's liable to strike someone at first glance (especially in the '90s, say)... it's literally just something I've seen written enough times to where perhaps it's a 'thing' for some people.

At Wimbledon she did the greatest touring NWA title defence against Heather Watson. Just note perfect in every way. Also, the French this year (talking men's now) was the shittiest booking I've ever seen. Even Russo at his worst wouldn't've booked something so terrible. By all means put Novak over Rafa, but in straight sets in the 1/4s, only to then have Wawrinka take the final ("look, the other semi final wasn't a joke!")... urgh.

Whilst that's an arguable/contentious point (to put it mildly), I was referring to him as an in-ring worker rather than as a booker.

To answer the question at hand: there really isn't a whole lot to it. If you watch/listen to a shitload of anything, you develop a better understanding of it. Take... a blues song. The first time you hear it (as in having never heard blues music before) you're probably confused, maybe you enjoy the "vibe" of it, it's not as though it takes up a great deal of time. If you keep listening to Muddy or whomever you'll quickly grasp the basic twelve-bar form, the AAB lyrical structure, whatever. You listen more and you'll pick up on common phrases in the guitar playing, you'll differentiate tones, BB's vibrato, phrases, octave slide, etc. quickly becomes as distinct as say Hank Marvin's wobble on the whammy bar. You listen more, and if you start to play the guitar, you notice how much is pentatonic (99%), who is going 'outside the box' and being chromatic or throwing in jazzier licks or playing the 'wrong' scale, or who's playing licks that fall nicely under the fingers. Maybe you start to find blues music limited in the way one might argue the basic three-part wrestling match or the (ahem) 'Southern tag' formulas are predictable-as-shit, or maybe you appreciate the simplicity. Maybe you start to think SRV was great because of how many different player's styles he was able to amalgamate; or perhaps you start to resent his unoriginality and think for someone who worshipped Hendrix he sure missed the boat on what Jimi was about. The same can apply to any form of music, say, be it the Beatles, Bird, or Beethoven. Ditto film, literature, whatever. To a Frank Kermode, understanding a Shakespeare play was a doddle. To a 14 y/o high school student encountering even Romeo and Juliet for the first time is 'wtf'. But Frank was once that 14 y/o too; he read and read and read and soon it began to make sense, and he kept reading and his knowledge developed and developed and developed.

I guess this is the perfect place to ask: where did the idea that Baba is/was the perfect wresting psychologist come from?

Punk certainly has a fair few feathers in his cap with me: even before the 2011 push he was able to make himself stand-out in the WWE mid-card as more than just another guy, and very few people have managed that; he would make you watch him; he essentially willed himself into the push; he has plenty of good matches against a variety of guys. BUT... a lot of those matches have been wildly overrated (vs. Joe and Cena especially), to where they feel lesser than they are when I watch them, if that makes sense. I can see him crawling in at the bottom (and I agree with those who've said that the only "indy" guy clearly above him is Bryan) but I can't see him going above, say, 85 at all.

CIMA as a "draw" is a weird one... I mean I'm not sold on him at all but, Toryumon/Dragon Gate is the one promotion in Japan post-millennium to not go seriously down at any point and has been running a regular profit and drawing solid houses for a pretty long time now. In terms of figures it's... not terribly impressive in the grand scheme of wrestling history but, relevant to every other company around them, it's an impressive stability.

I'm not sure if there's a non-asshole way to put this but... isn't all charity work to some extent self-congratulatory? Or, rather, ego-boosting? I'm not saying it's the entire reason behind it (much like I'm sure Stephanie genuinely does care about helping children), but why else do people bring up volunteering at x, donating to y, if not to say, on a certain level, "look at me, I'm a good person!"? I'm hardly the most charitable guy in the world but I have a few monthly DDs to different charities (as with most people, for causes that have affected my family), but whilst I care for those causes, I'd be lying if I said I didn't take some satisfaction from going "well that's a pack of cigarettes gone to a better cause". Shit, that's how the door callers sell it to you.

Hmm... I've only heard glowing praise whenever his name's come up with WoS-era people.

Whilst I agree with you guys, if it's a word you grew up with, sometimes it just sticks. My best friend when I was a kid was mixed-race. Everyone, himself included, referred to him as 'half-caste'. It wasn't until I was in high school and we were studying a Benjamin Zephaniah poem (I think it was one of his) that I had any clue whatsoever that 'half-caste' was in any way derogative. Or, nobody would say 'negro' now but for my parents' generation it was the politically-correct term. Ditto 'coloured'. And like everybody else I was using 'fag', 'gay', 'homo' etc as an insult long before I had any idea what homosexuality was. I hear 'retarded' thrown around casually all the time, 'mentally-handicapped' was deemed acceptable (ish?) until fairly recently, and even the concept of rape has evolved into having sex with someone 'too intoxicated to consent' even if the girl is as forward as you, and I'm sure we've all had shags when absolutely wasted and don't think of ourselves as 'rapists'... and I'm pretty sure I've heard 'midget' used about Torito. Basically, and speaking only for myself, I'll judge someone's 'racist/homophobic/sexist-etc quota' differently if they're 16 to if they're 86, these 'lexical changes' or whatever you want to call them don't happen over night and the older someone is, the longer a word has been entrenched, well, it becomes more difficult to change.

Is this on YouTube? And did these guys have several matches together (in this era) or just the one? There was a Benoit/Rey match around this time where someone pointed out to me (and I agreed) that you could see the age/etc in Benoit because his feeding/catching wasn't as sudden/snappy as it had been a few years earlier.

I've said before, two things had to happen in this match: 1) HHH works the back. He's 'The Cerebral Assassin' yadda-yadda-yadda... and even if he wasn't, Shawn's coming off a 4.5 year hiatus due to back problems. 2) Shawn kips-up. It's his 'I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaack!' moment. That each is counter-productive to the other is... what it is. They could not have worked this match without doing both of those things. And don't try and tell me Shawn could've had that moment otherwise, his kip-up is his Hulk-Up, his pulling down the strap...

Purely to play Devil's Advocate... if AJ Styles were signed would we be seeing such articles digging up his homophobia? And in the grand scheme of wrestling "sleaziness"...

It seems bizarre to think I'd rather see Doc's matches with Johnny Ace than with Terry Gordy but...

The argument against Bryan is "does he get all those Most Outstanding Awards" if he's 10/+ years older? Personally (and I'm way more down on Bryan than most, admittedly) I think the answer's an obvious "no", but the reality is he's almost obligated the vote because one has to reflect the other. If someone's won 20 Grammys they're gonna go into the Grammy HOF or whatever their equivalent might be.

There's a world of difference between a match looking as though it was planned in advance, and a match that any knowledgeable, common-sensical fan can tell must have been. You simply cannot ad-lib one of the great AJ matches in the same way that I refuse to believe Faulkner's first draft story about As I Lay Dying or that "the music just flowers from Mozart" and he didn't correct (/barely corrected) his manuscripts. Every time Steamboat tells the Mania vs. Clash story I want to crack him in the face with Hamlet carved in granite and scream "redrafted, motherfucker". Matt's point is worth repeating. (All the planning in the world isn't gonna turn Brie Bella into Bayley).

I don't know, I like the 'NOAHisms'. Did he have to kill himself when he was already on his 7th cat's life? No. Excessive? Probably. But where Kobashi differs from KENTA, from just about very big ROH match I've seen, from any of Cena's current "bombfests" from Punk forward, is the majority of the time those matches were laid-out in a strong, clear way that never lost me as to its purpose. I'd toss every current WWE agent on the dung heap to have Kobashi lay out the big matches for them. A secondary point worth mentioning: barely-mobile Andre Chopbashi was not only a hell of an apron worker, but he had more variations of chop than 95% of guys have moves. Some he'd try and were more than a little silly (I recall an Orange Crush -> Chop in one multi-person match early in '08) but God bless the guy for trying to still be a great offensive wrestler when he had less movement than a 1992 action figure.

Rey, Benoit... Savage did a good few "proto-Nitro" matches in the 80s... Also, the NJ Jrs were far more fun JIP, if that counts. And when television wrestling is brought up I can't not tip my hat to whomever edited the AJW TV shows.

See I actually liked one of the KENTA matches for the first 2/3rds. Full of mirroring spots, great crisp-as-anything action, etc... and then there was an apron bump. First thoughts: he's watched his Kobashi, the recipient is essentially done for from here-on-in but fights on valiantly making (at most) the odd hint of a comeback but the big bump was the deciding factor in the end. A simple structure for evenly matches guys + great action hit fantastically = a very strong match. Except... it's brushed off fairly quickly and they do a typical back-and-forth finish. Davey/KENTA did the same thing in ROH so maybe that was KENTA's idea but... no. He's a lesser (i.e. less notable output) KENTA: he has many very obvious strengths but in terms of putting them together whole and delivering the match there's no reason he couldn't? I haven't seen it.

Shame on John for forgetting the 6/98 Kawada match.

Eh, I wouldn't judge a bump on how it looks. That differed from Hayabusa's injury vastly because her momentum took her over with the impact, whereas his body took a back bump with his head tucked back the wrong way (i.e. his momentum took him back the opposite way). If she had signs of a concussion they don't send her out the next night, not post-Benoit, certainly not with the Punk lawsuit... she fed up and took the finish fine, there was no reports of her collapsing backstage. It's a risky spot, and all the more for a woman with a slim frame (see Tyson Kidd's neck muscles saving his life), but the same thing happened to Jericho from the top rope and he was fine as I recall. I'd actually wager that that exact same bump has happened in just about every wrestling school because no matter how many reps you do with a crash pad or with someone assisting your flip, there's always one.

So what show/match was it that Vince decided he needed to put a buffer match between the main events? SummerSlam 2002 had HHH/Shawn and Brock/Rock back to back, anything more recently than that?