MJH

Still having issues with the quoting function... For the same reason that Destroyer/Baba, say, isn't a smarter match than Jumbo/Tenryu because "they didn't have to use powerbombs" - Misawa and Kawada were wrestling a later, more developed style, hence using more and/or bigger high spots. Matches don't come any more carefully (/"smartly") laid-out than the big Misawa/Kawada/Kobashi stuff.

It's not (though the line made me laugh), but I agree that someone saying "Kobashi/Sasaki isn't a carefully/smartly laid out match" watched a different match than I did.

The Jumbo/Tenryu series having less 2.9's, headdrops, etc has nothing to do worth them being smarter.

The crowd was terrible: lots of disturbances, awful chants (thankfully no "we are awesome"), though Cena turned the whole Network thing pretty well in his opening promo and it wasn't mentioned the rest of the night. HHH actually tried to create (or so I think) a new "Fandango" by singing "Another One Bites The Dust" (including the bassline) but it only lasted a few minutes. As for the show... I enjoyed Sheamus/Rusev, and it was the only match that didn't look like "silly fake shit" (Cena tried hard with Ryback too, in fairness), but the crowd went Sheamus/Orton on it for the most part, unfortunately. Henry/Ziggler lasted all of six spots and a few of them were botched.

That's an issue with the scripting of the interviews rather than the interviews being scripted though; there's obviously nothing stopping someone writing a promo duel that has interjections every other syllable (other than it would tire quickly). You could have scripted any great promo of the past - many of Jake's and Arn's read as if scripted, actually, and we know of Rock carrying a tape recorder around with him and nobody truly improvises, jazz musicians always fall back on prepared licks, etc. Laying out a match in advance can breed, in the right hands, a more coherent, better structured one. In the right hands being the operative phrase there - we've all seen countless awful indy matches/sequences where it's all too apparent... but you've also got the great All Japan matches, y'know? There's no reason why, with a talented writer, or writers, and giving them time to write the scripts to the best possible quality, you can't be giving Renee Young reason to name-drop Longfellow after every segment she's in.

I can't imagine it's anything to do with SBO because they kept advertising the PPV as on there rather than the Network.

I'm actually hoping it doesn't get set up before Raw next week. I'm nonplussed on the Network, but the show being drowned out in "Fuck the network!" chants would be quite the spectacle, even if they're condensed in post-production.

I'd be in favour of scripted promos (certainly with some people) hypothetically, but the WWE wouldn't get a sniff of the level of scriptwriter for whom I'd be supportive of the idea... it's not as if great dramatic monologues (and those who are able to pen them) have ever been in major supply, nor someone able to churn them out with, what?, several hours notice at best.

I'd disagree and say it's standard scriptwriting practice. Problems arise from writing roles for actors cast rather than the other way around, or casting amongst a shallower pool and thus not best fitting those involved, and said "actors" not being particularly gifted. And, of course, the Monday afternoon rewrite meaning the scripts are at the roughest draft/expanded early treatment level. Even Shakespeare's first drafts sucked, no doubt.

That Seth Rollins quote is horrible in any context. I got a kick out of Jericho using "gelatinous" et al, and Alexander Theroux would make a great heel manager, but the Rollins line is something I'd expect from a fourteen year old failing to show off in his first GCSE English assignment.

I don't think any of them are good, much less really good, unless you're grading on a curve; they're as "good" as they need to be, but (or because), as you said, Bill, "divas match" = "popcorn/merch/cool-down match" (etc). Debbie Malenko was good by the time she broke her leg. But if those girls you mentioned were guys, and their mechanics and selling and acting and... were the same, there's no way anyone would be complimenting their work.

The key is in the chair. If the plummet was planned, I find it hard to believe that someone as poised and professional as Undertaker (which this match is the best example of, really) would leave the chair casually lying next to where Foley's crashing through - even the greenest pro-wrestlers take the time to ensure a chair is turned the right way around before hitting a guy with it, etc, Taker is dropping it somewhere out of the way. But Taker doesn't even use the chair, so why bring it over from the other side of the cell roof if it's not part of the next spot? He's clearly bringing it over with him in anticipation of something (rather than do the chokeslam spot, walk back to where he climbed up and carry it over then) and that's why he drops it close at hand.

Well, OK, Davey is far from the worst wrestler I've ever seen, let's not get carried away. To defend him (temporarily), some of the tag matches are alright as the structure is harder to fuck up, and there's an ROH match with KENTA (from '09?) where the first 2/3rds is a really strong match - they mirror each other well, the execution is as expected, it builds well - and then KENTA hits a Falcon Arrow off the apron. If from that point on Davey is out of it and it's only a matter of time before KENTA finishes him I'm more than fine with that, it would have been a very good match, perhaps heavy on the bombs for some people but I'm cool with that provided it's laid out effectively (which it would have been). Alas... I think it's a minute before Davey's firing up to go on offence and isn't selling it at all (for, if memory serves, a fucking Texas Cloverleaf). So, um, yeah.

I would need to re-watch the San Antonio (?) Raw match to determine a true comparison, but the '08 Bryan/Cesaro match told me both were better in the WWE. It's not that the ROH match is bad, per se, though it's nothing special certainly, but there's really not a lot to recommend it on. The opening mat-work doesn't establish anything though it's - in the main (there's two notably loose/weak spots: first when Cesaro grabs an arm/Fujiwara out of a bow-and-arrow attempt and Bryan gives himself/rolls over far too easily; the second where it's clearly Bryan bumping off the knucklelock rather than being powered/thrown down) - generally worked fine, and I can accept the rolling knucklelock sequence as a cheap pop; Claudio/Cesaro's strength doesn't come into play at all until the (weak) spot to set up Claudio's control (I'd say "cut off"/transition normally but it's not like Bryan was dominant beforehand). The work on the back is OK, even if Bryan's selling the lower-back and most of the offence is upper-back/neck, and they do a good job working the surfboard (it would've been nice had it not come so easily for Bryan later on), but the control is nothing exceptional or even above routine. Things escalate (noticeably) quickly for a couple of near falls and then Bryan counters the post-up->uppercut with a backslide to win. They're clearly just winging something decent - think run-of-the-mill house-show match - but whereas in the WWE system you're guaranteed a tighter structure, the putting-together of this match is very loose and half-arsed. Like I said at the start: it's not that either guy, nor the match, is actively bad, but it's also not the half-arsing of finished products/performers either, and that this and the Nigel match are from 2008, not 2002/3 (when Bryan already had quite the rep but you're to expect him being lesser), isn't reflecting well on him, nor making me think I was harsh/being contrarian/underrating him in his earlier run.

The problem is when a signature spot is sequence-based (and WoS, not dissimilarly to modern WWE, though in a different way, is often sequence-based) and most egregiously when it's a counter (Kidman got the flak for what many guys did, and what even more have done since). But if you watch any WWE match, be it week-to-week or eighteen-months-apart, you're going to see babyface x do the same shine, the same comeback... it's pretty terrible, really, but it's going to be there with so many guys. As a postscript: suppleness is a great attribute to have as a babyface, but it's much better utilised during the heat as a way to make otherwise mundane holds look torturous. See Kikuchi, Toyota, even Jack Evans and Melina.

Third-ed (assuming that's a word...?).

Eh... so Bryan vs. Nigel from 2/08 came up under "recommended" on YouTube and I decided to watch it... I didn't think much of it as a match and Bryan's performance wasn't particularly good either. The lay-out was confusing as hell (token nothing matwork to start, a rapid escalation leading to Nigel walking out, a pretty terrible "fiery" minute of Bryan's offence on the re-start (read: a few chops) leading into Nigel controlling that was targeting the arm one minute, being a cunt the next, the taped-up leg of Bryan's came into it for one spot, his eye played up every so often but nothing other than Nigel as heel was consistent); Bryan's selling was terrible, going from a limp body letting Nigel do whatever do him during his control (not to mention many instances of noticeable calling and readying himself for spots), to a pretty poor job of being fired up and not selling much of anything (crowd dive as a hope spot!), and a sudden two-minutes near the end where his arm's suddenly limp after one submission with poor facials therein... and whilst the "noble Bryan won't attack the head but Nigel will exploit the eye" is fine with a lower guy (if very antiquated), it made supposed-top-face Bryan just look naïve as hell. I remember not being too high on their matches at the time (I thought the Liverpool match was the best), certainly relevant to most, but I never expected I'd be this down on it...

Brock/Cain isn't breaking 1m buys. The fight's happened and Cain won handily back when Brock was training MMA. It barely broke 1m then. Nobody is buying Brock a second time round after such a lay off. Oh, and Cain can't promote a fight for shit (it's actually embarrassing how badly the fights with Dos Santos drew). Neither WWE nor UFC nor combined are breaking 2m, nor even coming close. And that's including the 700k(?) who have the network and would, presumably, wouldn't have to pay for it twice over.

I guess I'll be the low mark on Cena (or certainly lower than most though he's making the list). He's a triumph of industry - including the WWE system, which absolutely includes the cameras - rather than talent, and I'm not sure I'd call any of his matches "great", but when you're on top for ten years and I'm having as tough a time thinking of any match of his worse than "solid" in that time frame, and he excels in some areas as much as he sucks in others, you can't pass over him.

Well for starters he was probably the best rookie ever (which somehow hasn't been mentioned yet), though of course that's what's lead to calls of "disappointment". I'm not a fan of his more recent stuff (his selling in the Omori match was awful, for instance), but his Top 50-minimum spot was sown up by the time of the NOAH-split, really. My gut says somewhere around 30, with it being his NOAH stuff I'm going to revisit: something like his loss to Marufuji is a perfect example of a match where he could get something far better out of Marufuji than anyone else (and seeing what Misawa and Kobashi did with him by comparison).

So Loss posed Cena vs. Jericho in the former's thread... but the issue for Rey with me is similar, and the "Jericho" is Eddie. Not thinking about it too hard, admittedly, were someone to ask me "what are Rey's two best matches?" I'd say both are vs. Eddie (Havoc, obviously, and the 6/05 Smackdown match), and in both Eddie is the better. But Rey has the longer list of strong TV matches (though I'm struggling to think of truly great matches), and was far more consistent, is a superlative babyface worker, and you could absolutely make the case that, career vs. career, Rey's was better. But, because Eddie's the better in their matches, I just can't put him ahead of Eddie. Thoughts? (and feel free to disagree on Eddie as better in those matches).

[i'd move this back to Honda's folder but, again, both the quote function and general c/p aren't functioning for me for whatever reason...] I'm neither denying that Kobashi was put into a position to work "NOAH epics" more frequently than Honda (of course he was), nor that they're exclusive to Kobashi (ditto), but Kobashi had his way of working them, Misawa his, Akiyama his, etc... and the Honda match is a perfect blueprint of how Kobashi laid such matches out when positioned against a limited opponent. He'd give them an early control to put over some aspect of their arsenal that would give him an issue (in Honda's case it's the mat-wrestling, obviously), find an answer and regain control, take a big equalising bump from the apron/ramp, give them a prolonged control off that and then work his comeback through to the finish. Like I said before, I'm not saying Honda wasn't good in the match, he absolutely "rose to the occasion", and if we're being critical of any part of the match it's probably that Kobashi's control between the opening section and the ramp bump goes on a tad long (maybe he wanted to hammer in Honda as underdog); rather, I can only give so much credit for the match to Honda when it's Ace Kobashi 101, y'know?

I can't think of any great matches where the "lesser" worker didn't bring a lot to the table. My point in the Kobashi/Honda match wasn't that Honda wasn't very good in that match (he was), just that it's as clearly a Kobashi match as we might identify something as being a Flair match, say.

Well since I nominated them, I'll just re-iterate that I think, for the two-and-a-half years they were a regular team that they were the best team I've ever seen. If you stack up the matches against Kawada/Taue's, they were routinely having the better matches. I said in the latter's thread that I'd still take Kawada/Taue for #1 because of longevity/far more great matches, but Misawa/Kobashi were everything you'd expect from two super-great babyface workers paired up.

I enjoyed the Thompson match, but, as with a lot of WoS stuff, it's much too exhibition-y for me. The holds and counters are nice (very nice), but I rarely got the sense either was actually trying to win. The crab felt there just to exhibit Sarjeant's counter (not helped by Walton calling for it on commentary). I don't like playing "what if", but it would have been interesting to see what effect shoot-style groups getting big on TV here would've had on the style, as that seems to me the natural progression it never took.