MJH

I'll stand by: No Mercy > Mania 2000 > TLC1 show a nice development, with the latter being an untopped stuntfest the company have regurgitated without near the success for 15 (!) years. But no.

She's one of the more fascinating candidates really, you have a slam dunk top 10 in various categories (FIP selling, moveset, bumping etc), glaring flaws (well, comeback selling and screaming for some), and as many great matches on her resume as any of the girls (and very few men ahead of her in that regard). Her weaknesses have always been stressed over her strengths, unfortunately (aside from...). Ditto that the no selling comeback will apply to 95% of babyfaces. Definitely outside 20. Best I can give atm is 20-40.

I don't think there's a single person in the company I'd say is good at selling. Well, no, not long term/the overall toll of the match at any rate. But the no selling babyface comeback has long since been an integral part of US wrestling; if there was one AJPW thing I wish they'd have taken it's the drawn out Misawa comeback. Nobody did.

Fired for an article in the Enquirer? What next, Wade Barrett is fired because the Mail claim he's imported 100 Aids-riddled mutant spiders from Latvia?

Seconding Yamada via Dream Rush.

The first Han/Tamura match is quite clearly veteran/upstart. The ensuing two less so. But it couldn't be more obvious in the 96 match. Psychology can differ in shoot style, though. My memory of the 1/89 Takada/Maeda match is Maeda wrestling a very careful match and to ensure there isn't a repeat of the upset. You don't really get that sort of a match in other styles, but it's perfectly suited to shoot style.

The point wasn't about having strong matches, as such, but making them have to keep up with Cesaro, or Neville bouncing around lightening fast, etc. They also need to work on differentiating themselves from the guys stylistically. It's WWE so they'll only go so far, but they could do more with their flexibility (Melina used hers quite well, think of how more sat in the basic boston crabs etc where in AJW), maybe work that bit quicker, etc.

If they want them to get better, that is genuinely become smoother in the ring, they'd have them working mixed (as in genuinely intergender) matches on the road with your Tyson Kidds (I know he's injured but he's the best example and had a ready made partner in Natalya) and other quick, crisp guys they're otherwise doing nothing with. Shit, crazy as it sounds, but they're a bigger focus than Cesaro, have Sasha go 15-20 with him on house shows. Who's the last female talent to be a great worker?Has there been one since Yoshida 15 years ago? I don't think Cesaro's a great worker either but he's a whole lot crisper than any of the women and he'll tighten up Sasha's work as much as she's able.

Maybe it's the AJPW fan in me, but Tanahashi working Ibushi's leg and it being the junior-ranked guy fighting through it to keep it even felt backwards. I know Tanahashi's been working legs for years, but even with Ibushi higher on the totem pole than two years ago this is still a vet/underdog match, right? You even had the killer snake eyes for Tanahashi's neck injury angle to give Ibushi his opening... I don't know. Naito/Fale was a great indication of how good Okada is. Nothing more. Styles/Shibata was ok but I agree it needed more time.

They need to drop the Flair from Charlotte's routine as they have with her name: it's one thing to have her do the Stephens Roll onto the apron, or maybe keep the bridging Figure-4, but the chops, the whoo's, it's all too much especially for a girl who's your straight, dominant athlete "ace" but without any great charisma etc; she's really more Bret than Flair, which is fine, but Bret knew he couldn't be Hogan and didn't try to be. The women's match just wasn't any good. Meltzer made a point about how practised their NXT matches are, and I've no doubt they are, but whilst there's been some telegraphing in their past singles matches it was far more pronounced in the three-way. You could practically see them going 1-2-3 in their head with everything. I've said from the start they need a girl far, far better than either Sasha or Charlotte to bring about the change they're hoping for, but the match needed to at least be at the level of their NXT matches and fell short of that.

The most literal case is when a wrestler would get knocked out and have to be walked through a few spots, a la Taker/Foley HIAC after the bumps.

I'll echo what Karl put above and say it was a fun show all the way through. In a way, it's kind of like WrestleMania with a couple of Orton/Seth's but nothing on the level of Lesnar/Reigns. The Jr. Tag was all kinds of fun in particular: one part the expected spot fest and one part a comedy match. And I too liked how pulled back the main event was: it had plenty of nice spots (I especially liked the Styles Clash tease amongst the cradle sequence) and an emphatic finish, but they also left themselves plenty of room to go bigger in the future. And, yeah, whilst it wasn't sold out, Sumo looked pretty damn full, the 9k figure seems realistic, and for what the card was that has to be considered a success. On the boxes, I believe they're sold as one ticket, and can seat four, but don't always, and plenty of people bought the box seats in 2's and 3's.

I never thought then, nor do I think now, that Stephanie was comparing 9/11 to Vince's trial, at least, not directly - the message she was trying to get across was that adversity brings people closer together and that a United States would get through whatever hardship was thrown upon it; the problem was in how she worded it, starting with the trial, rather than treating it parenthetically. What makes that odd is, in watching the video, she looks like she's reading off a prompter, thus the wording issues should have been long ironed out. That said, even if we run with the idea that a spoilt, protected, rich-girl-in-a-bubble sees daddy's trial as on a par with 9/11, it's still not as bad as Bradshaw.

Rather than good or bad (for the record I lean towards the latter), I think it's easier to just say Hogan/Andre was superbly effective. Kinda like... One Direction split up, Cowell wants Harry to be a big solo act, and some rent-a-songwriter writes a song that goes on to break all records as a single (and its resulting album) and the lad becomes the biggest solo act since Michael Jackson. It doesn't have to be God Only Knows, and almost certainly wouldn't be, but one couldn't argue that it's perfect for its intention.

I was at the Raw tapings last November in Liverpool, on the floor, a few rows back. I can't stress enough how terrible most guys look up close. Rusev vs. Sheamus was the one exception. Don't get me wrong, it didn't look like they were competing, but you could hear every strike land solid, which is a step up from most, and an important one. That doesn't make his gimmick any less cheap, of course, but he plays it well and he has a tough vibe lacking in most.

Put me in the "of course they do" camp. Simple case in point: if I take my three favourite matches of all time (6/3/94, 6/9/95 and 12/6/96) they simply do not work unless Misawa has been positioned where he had.

They finished 3-3-3 but you missed off the 95 Tag Round Robin which I don't believe is out there?

The Hogan/WrestleMania piece in the concourse is permanent, right? or is that the same deal?

The Dominic angle was awful - and panned at the time - and the matches were considered disappointing bar the June Smackdown match. I'm not sure how aware people were of just how bad Eddie's physical state was at the time but, with the exception of the Smackdown match and the darkened promo on Smackdown I can't recall much top draw stuff from it.

I'm aware of them, I just don't believe they're of the required quality. They're all solid-good, but I've said all along that to bring about the change people are envisioning will require several Great talents who're as able as any of the men. It should be easier for wrestling than real sports, realistically. Ronda isn't getting out the first round with Demetrius Johnson, she'd be unlikely to last more than half way through it, and yet she's been marketted far better (and has more star quality) and thus is a bigger deal. If AJ vs Nattie pulled off Aja vs Toyota from the Dome on a WWE show now who'd follow them?

So the opening segment has run long... you have Ziggler vs. Barrett, Cesaro/Tyson vs. Usos, Goldust vs. Big E, Rusev vs. Sheamus, Bryan vs. Orton and Nikki Bella vs.Emma and have to cut one short... you're cutting the Divas every time and thank God for that. It's all well and good discussing a nice, theoretical company where the women are heavily featured but the WWE hasn't had even a handful of good female wrestlers in the locker room since Survivor Series 95 and you can't run what you don't have.

Commentary isn't a necessity by any means: wrestling is fucking simple and requires no real translation, hence a Maria Menounos (sp?) gravitating towards it on TV as a kid who spoke little/no English. The best comparison I can think of is surtitles in opera: they're useful if you've never seen the opera before as they make the plot more comprehensible and explain what's going on line-by-line, breaking the plot down for you... but if you've read the synopsis in the program then you don't really get much out of them, the music sells itself, and you quickly realise how terrible most librettos are.

The quantity of titles isn't an issue for me, rather how they're presented. I loved the levels of the titles in AJW, for instance, where you had Jr. Title for younger girls, who'd then graduate to AJW Title/Tag Titles, who'd then graduate to the WWWA belts. If nothing else, it adds a nice structure to the roster/cards and gives everyone something to be working towards.

I'm hardly the most frequent watcher of New Japan, but Okada's moveset has always struck me as very head-and-neck focused (as are his finishes, thus it makes sense). He's cut out some of the flashier submissions, which is probably a good thing given they're hard to transition out of and his matches needn't be littered with Milano-Collection-ATisms, but that odd bit of flashiness does suit his gimmick, at least to me. As does his aloofness: I needn't mention stoicness in regards to top Japanese guys, and I've found his mannerisms to be a nice balance between stoic and cocky.

Eh, I think there's a big difference between getting busted for pot or a DUI and having private photos plastered all over the internet; had Jennifer Lawrence got dropped from a bunch of films because of what happened to her, I don't imagine too many people siding with the "embarassment" of the film companies. [Edit: Perhaps she did and there was, it's not the type of story I pay much attention too, but, at least to me, this is more akin to the Tanahashi situation years ago than it was, say, RVD's.]