Sean Liska

I think he wants Roman to be a mega star. The guy is going to beat HHH, Taker, and Brock in consecutive Mania main events. They broke Taker's streak and had Brock squash Cena with the idea of him getting the rub off it eventually. Just hasn't worked, whether you want to blame Roman or booking or both. But I think the intent is there.

100% with you on how frustrating it is to be considered a troll if you don't think Okada is having the greatest year in wrestling history, makes me value this place even more. It just doesn't work for me. I have no reason to dislike NJPW, company with great history that has given me plenty of entertainment and I love seeing the crowds they're drawing, and they give me tons of content for $10 a month. But after watching the NJPW PPV I had this strange appreciation for the Ambrose-Drifter match on Raw. The Drifter actually got heat and "you suck" chants, when he had Ambrose in a chinlock the crowd rallied behind Ambrose, they didn't do a ton of moves, it was simple, it didn't overstay its welcome. I don't know when I turned into this old man. I loved 90s puro, I consider Misawa's guys vs Jumbo's guys to be the best feud ever. Would disagree on wrestling being more irrelevant than ever. The fact that Mania drew 90k last year and Mania 11 was in the Hartford Civic Center says it all to me, that was a rough time. Hogan-Flair in a career match couldn't sell out an arena back then while WWE sells out major arenas regularly now.

Watching the NJPW show yesterday and seeing the reactions online - man have I never been more out of touch with modern smarkdom. Everybody just watches these matches with a star rating algorithm in mind and then reacts according to the number of near falls and high spots and reversed finishers. The obsession with Meltzer star ratings is out of control. Every match feels like watching a movie that's desperately trying to get an Oscar nomination. They know the formula of how to get stars from Big Dave and that helps their business. I'm looking forward to Tanahashi-Billy Gunn. Lets see Gunn slow the match down and get heat on Tanahashi and then feed his comeback with a series of fast-paced bumps. I'm looking forward to Jinder holding Orton in a chinlock at MITB while the crowd chants "USA". I know I'm not saying stuff that hasn't been said here, but I've never felt this alienated. I do still like SD, NXT, CMLL, and CWF Mid-Atlantic. I'm going to go watch Casas-Dandy now. I do get a kick out of the NJPW young lions. By not being allowed to do anything fancy, they just look really solid executing fundamental stuff and can pop the crowd with well-timed simple moves. They remind me of 90s NJPW style.

Is it? It's arguably more cynical that they'd only buy that angle for a guy with indie cred. It just needs to be someone that's over. If they decided to tweak Enzo's character and flesh him out I think the crowd would have responded the same way. Well, maybe not Enzo because that's not what people want from him, but you know what I mean, someone who's over but didn't come from the indies.

OK maybe I'm off on Strong headlining Takeover but I just love NXT getting over a white meat babyface story with modern smark fans that even 1989 NWA fans rejected. Love how NXT at heart is 1983 wrestling with modern presentation and marketing.

I know I'm not breaking new ground here, but I'm so amused by this Roderick Strong push that's been happening over the past few weeks. NXT has done a nice job using marketing concepts from ECW and peak ROH to brand themselves as an underground alternative and to get their fan base to buy into it. But underneath it all HHH is so damn old-school. Like Jim Cornette old-school at his heart. They may be heading for Strong-Roode at Takeover Brooklyn. How do they get Roderick ready for this big spot, for this product primarily consumed by dudes in their 20s and 30s? By having him kick the heads off a bunch of dudes and be a badass rebel or whatever? No, they do an video package highlighting his youth and his family and travails and all this emotional stuff. Then they do an emotional video package on his wife and child. Then he comes out and cuts a promo about how it's not him vs the world anymore, its him with his wife and child vs the world. He's cornier than the Ricky Steamboat character that got turned on by much less cynical 1989 NWA fans. But it's so well done that it's working! The heel with the cool entrance came out and made fun of Roddy's sentimentality and had some funny jokes, and no one cheered for him. They all back the guy who's just doing this for his family. I know this isn't new to NXT and they've done similar things with characters like Zayn and Bayley, but I'm just impressed by HHH's ability to defeat the cynicism of his young adult audience and successfully do 1983 wrestling with modern presentation.

Watching more, Jerry Lawler is now doing play by play with Michael St John out and Dave Brown on vacation, Fuller and Jarrett had a match with Travis and Awesome Kong, Travis took a backdrop on the floor, PYTs interfered, Eddie Marlin came in throwing punches cleaning house. This doesn't get enough credit for being all-time entertaining TV.

1991 is so great. I'm fifteen minutes into an episode and already Bert Prentice has beat up Michael St John, gotten into a brawl with Eddie Marlin, leading into a big brawl with his new PYTs and Jarrett/Fuller. And now Robert Fuller is cutting a great fired up promo. We haven't even gotten into the usual craziness that follows Embry all year. In this era of binge watching this is the perfect TV for that.

I just came across this, thanks so much for putting this up, will definitely be digging into it. Also saw that you put up 1991 Memphis - that's such a great underrated year and we have the Memphis feed which makes everything so much better, you're doing wrestling fans a great service.

I think Orton has less of a point than he used to. In 2003, a guy like Ospreay doing so much was likely going to lead to injuries without much financial benefit. Now? He's a guy who can help NXT draw on the road and hone his character and work there and go to the main roster and make good money for several years. Being a flippy indy guy is now a valid way to try to make good money in the business if you don't have size or great promos. Look at Finn getting a big push while being small and not particularly inspirational on the mic, it's a different time.

Like not trying to be argumentative but for $10 you get Mania and HOF and NXT Takeover and every PPV ever back logged and its a big deal you don't get this glorified KFC commercial? We've gotten spoiled. $10 is what it costs to get a Diet Coke in a WWE souvenir cup at a house show.

Because it's $9.99 to watch every PPV and feeling entitled to all content WWE produces for that price is a little greedy?

We're wasting time here when Dataintcash is posting again after 5 months.

Tommy Young during Flair-Steamboat is the one that sticks out to me. The 90s AJPW ref could be divisive but he could really escalate the drama.

Ultimately asking people to compare the promotional value of wrestling vs MMA is the same as asking people to judge Austin-Rock vs. Manning-Brady. It's just stupid. It's stupid to anyone not so deep in the bubble. But it's Dave's awards so he can keep asking people to compare Broadway to dudes in real sports trying to beat each other. And the results will look stupid because it's dumb criteria. How did Austin at his peak compare to Michael Jordan? How do their promos compare? Did Austin send people home as happy as Jordan? Was the Thesz press as good as Jordan's fadeaway? Was an NBA on TNT Thursay night rating as impressive as Raw's number?

I wasent necessarilly looking for them just what people had as recommendations for good ones. 2/16/81 with Backlund-Hansen and Morales-Slaughter is fun. Not going to find a much better 1-2 punch than that with old MSG shows.

Really heavily recommend you all check out the main event of this week's CWF Mid-Atlantic episode, it's the next chapter in the Lee-Attitude feud. I enjoyed this match so much. I don't know who is behind this group and teaching these guys to work so snug and to have such clever match layouts, but God bless them for the work they're doing.

Holy God I cant wait to watch this Race-Funk match, 2017 is amazing.

Two years ago I went to a Memphis nostalgia show that Ricky Morton was on. I got the chance to chat with him for a minute and I said, "Man, I've been watching a lot of 1980 Memphis when you were teaming with Ken Lucas, and you were already the best guy in the territory!" And the cool thing is that my dumb opinion meant something to him, as he didn't just shrug me off and get to the next person paying for an autograph. He put an arm around me and said - "You know why I was that good? Because Ken Lucas taught me how to be. Thank you brother." Point being, Ricky is a sentimental type and this is going to be a big deal for him and I'm very happy that he will get the moment.

Any thoughts on this Psycho Clown-Dr Wagner TripleMania match? They announced it a year ahead of time and seem to be hyping it all the time on their TV show, even though it's six months away. The last two TV shows each had about 20 minutes devoted to it. It might end up being the most hyped match ever and presumably will be one of the bigger lucha matches of all-time.

I really tried with the Okada match on the last show. I'm a big Suzuki fan. I'm trying to be more open-minded. But 40 minutes of Okada is just not for me. I can't do it. Of course Meltzer said it was unlike any great match ever and had the best selling of the last decade. I'm weird. The opener may have been my favorite match on the show. Strong heat throughout, easy story to get into with the young lion in there with the Suzuki guys trying to prove himself, some nice sequences to start, some heat, hot tag, hot finishing stretch, some highspots, good story, go home at the right time, everyone's happy. I don't know where I diverged from so much of the internet on wrestling tastes.

Off the top of my head, Watts/JYD-Midnights in New Orelans and the 86 GAB show in Charlotte were in front of at least 25k.

Doesn't it feel like the time is ripe for another 95-96 ECW or 2004-2006 ROH type product to come along and shake things up? WWE did an admirable job producing their own version of it with 2014-2015 NXT. But there are so many hardcore fans nowadays (look at Wreddit or the crazy success of Mania weekend for so many groups) - if someone could come along and just give them what they want, they could really take off. ROH and TNA have both failed in doing this.

It's not my favorite match, but if someone asks me why wrestling should be considered a respectable form of art worthy of so much of anyone's time, 6/8/90 is what I show them - just the perfect overall package because of the emotion and heat and significance and depth of storytelling and everything else.

I'm harder on NJPW than a lot of the internet but I've really enjoyed their 2017 so far. The last Korakuen show was a lot of fun with a great main event performance from Suzuki. I thoroughly enjoyed the FantasticMania shows. New Year's Dash was good and 1/4 was a very good show even if the main event was more like 3.5 stars to me. Looking forward to the two big February shows.