Sean Liska

Discussion about how good Memphis wrestling was on the Observer board, and this is Dave's synopsis of it. My head almost exploded - "Jerry Lawler was one of the greatest weekly performers in the history of wrestling, and Lance & Dave were the best announcing duo of all-time. Jerry Jarrett was a booker ahead of his time. And Jimmy Hart was a phenomenal manager. Aside from that, and guys like Eaton and all the guys who started that became stars later, it was pretty overrated. Take Lawler away and it really wouldn't have been much, that's how important Lawler was." I don't know. I guess the level of head-explosion depends on what he means by "and guys like Eaton who started that became stars later", because that's a lot of people.

You mean the part where 71 years old Funk actually gets burned by a legit fireball ? Sorry if I sound like an asshole, but I find this rather sad actually (not just the ending, the entire thing). And if we're calling this a "good pro-wrestling match" by today's standarts, then yes, I admit it, pro-wrestling has passed me by. I don't really see it as sad. It's not like either guy is hurting for money. Not everyone wants to get old and go fishing and watch the news. They love this stuff, they're still good at it in my eyes, it's fun, they get paid well. Doesn't keeping your mind stimulated help with avoiding Alzheimer's? Now, if we're talking about two old physically broken down guys who are only putting themselves through the punishment because they need it to pay that month's apartment rent, that's a little different. But Lawler is my role model for getting old and staying busy and active (professionally we're talking, not necessarily the personal stuff).

I don't have a problem with it in the context of the Bayley-Sasha program. Hard to explain but it just feels like the right move emotionally and the crowd loves it. I would not want to see it after a big Zayn-Owens grudge match. And they didn't, Owens murdered Zayn and then kept murdering him until a group of guys dragged him away.

I don't know, there's a little too much love for Eric Bischoff going on right now. We're not that far removed from his disastrous TNA run where he contributed nothing creatively, cost the company a bunch of money by convincing Dixie to take Impact on the road even though they couldn't even draw for PPVs, sent a drugged up Jeff Hardy to the ring to have a shoot match with Sting, was behind Magnus taking that brutal chair shot to the head, and was disliked by everyone who worked with him backstage.

Negro Casas is making a far stronger run at this then I would have expected a year ago. Truly elite performances we have footage of spanning 1987 and 2015. Pretty crazy.

Reigns is winning and knocking off Rollins for the title at Mania. Let's just all come to grips with it right now. At least Reigns is one of the few modern guys with a good working punch.

I would agree that the Flair podcast is unique in that the show is really about Ric every week, not the guest. But you need the different guests every week to jog his memory and have him remember great stories. I didn't learn anything about Kevin Sullivan from their show but it might be my favorite one because of all the great stories that Kevin made Ric think of. They had an episode where Conrad interviewed Flair and it was kind of dull and stuff we've heard. But get Sullivan on and we hear about Ric wandering around a hotel naked except for the Black Scorpion costume or Sullivan lighting Mosca's boots on fire. The Bischoff interview was shockingly entertaining.,I was afraid it would be another Russo deal but they had done great stories.

Are there comparisons to 90s NJPW being much more niche culturally than early 80s NJPW but having even bigger major shows?

I don't think anyone thriving in this TV cash bubble knows how the money will be replaced when the bubble pops. At least they can cut costs easily.

I also think it's partly wrestling becoming part of nerd culture and more hardcore Internet fans being created. How many members does Wreddit have now? I went to an NXT show in Columbus and couldn't believe how many 20-something urban hipster types were there, it was a very different kind of crowd, and those people are more apt to travel. Rumble, Mania, and SummerSlam have become conventions of these hardcore fans. But even Raw crowds in big city have gotten more and more smarky and rebellious.

I think its a trend across all of entertainment due to all of our entertainment options. I'm sure Hollywood doesn't sell as many actual tickets as they once did, but they jack up prices with 3D and make a fortune. Jimmy Fallon does a fraction of the viewership that Leno was doing 15 years ago, but he's a big success and gets paid a ton. Baseball has never been less culturally relevant, but they're making more money than ever. Only the NFL is immune to it.

Ha, I was going to post pretty much the same thing as peachchaos. The perfect announce team, one of the 5-best workers of all-time as the anchor with another all-time great as his #2, endlessly entertaining TV wrestling, exciting highlights of the big stuff every week, great writing, surprising and fun angles, great interviews, episodic feel, stacked roster, my favorite in-ring style, blood feuds, comedy...

It seems odd to me that Orton, Batista, and Edge won't get in when WWE has made hundreds of millions in profits over the past decade. Jericho is the only modern WWE guy to get in besides Cena?

I think back to being there live for Punk-Cena at MITB. I'm a huge sports fan, and the tension and emotional investment in that building was as intense as any sporting event I've been to, and I've been to some big games. The CM Punk character and his story was as engaging as any TV or movie fiction. In what other form of entertainment do you follow a character like CM Punk for 10 years with so much devotion and then get that payoff? The whole spectacle with the TitanTron and music and video packages is like a great Broadway production. Pro wrestling at its best combines the best of so many types of entertainment. If I ever wonder if I spend too much time watching something so silly, for some reason I always think of Misawa-Jumbo 6/8/90 and think that any form of entertainment that can create that scene is perfectly worthwhile.

I really dug that Finlay-White match. Finley is just so different from anyone else in mainstream wrestling. It's like his dad won't allow him to do any actual offensive moves yet, so he's forced to come up with clever stuff to keep things interesting. A lost art nowadays to make the little things matter.

Hiring good people underneath you is going to be one of the most important things HHH does if he ever takes over. Vince was pretty great at it over the years - I love that Jerry Jarrett was going to be the guy to run WWE if he went to jail. So yeah, HHH giving a large voice to people like Mercury and Regal and Dusty and Smiley is a nice sign. The DeMott saga not such a good sign.

There's lots of people who do exactly that. I see 'em all over places like Facebook, Youtube comments, and every other non-hardcore-fan website which attracts the general mainstream public. We're truly living in a bubble here if we believe that everyone is booing Cena ironically. I'm not saying it's ironic. But if they really hated Cena on top that much, they're still showing up in such large numbers after 10 years of Cena being the focus of TV every week? Ronnie Garvin was on top for like 3 months and immediately large amounts of people stopped coming to the arena. But these people really, truly hate Cena, yet have spent 10 years buying tickets to see shows he's going to headline just because they're that passionate about seeing him moved down the card? I think that if they hated him that much, they would have stopped watching WWE about 9 years ago. They may not even realize it themselves, but they have a lot of fun booing Cena and cheering his opponents. Rollins-Cena had so much more heat than anything else at SummerSlam.

It's not as much that. But at this point, when you buy a ticket to a WWE show, you know John Cena is going to be a major part of it, and has been for 10 years. You know that booing him will in no way influence his place on the card and that it's just playing along at this point. So if you're paying money to boo John Cena now, it's no different than successful heels from other eras who got people to pay money to cheer against them.

I was at SummerSlam. Footage of Cena's 500 wish got very polite and respectful applause from the crowd. And then he came out and everyone passionately hated him. Cena just is what he is at this point and it's never changing unless they turn him heel. If they put him in the HOF next year he would probably get a standing ovation. But young adult men love to hate his character. And they pay very good money to do it - you couldn't get a lower level secondary market ticket for SummerSlam for less than $500 and Cena drew a far larger response than anyone on the show.

Great idea for a thread. Earlier this year WWE ran EC and and MITB within two weeks of each other and people really liked it because each Raw had a sense of immediacy with not much time for filler. Memphis and Alabama are easily my favorite TV shows of the 80s, which makes me lean towards the weekly big shows. You don't get the Sting-Hogan long builds, but there's never any time for filler and I have a short attention span. But does that really mean that I love weekly shows or that I love the guys booking those territories? CMLL is an interesting example nowadays. There's only a few matches a year that they really build to. The nature of running Mexico City three times a week makes it tough. Would they be better or worse if they were like AAA and building towards bi-monthly big shows?

Yes, I am purposely going outside of the US because it's where we've seen things done differently but still making money.

I'm not totally disagreeing with you. But I'll see Jim Ross talking about Bray Wyatt getting cheered and how that's a failure on the company's part and won't work. And I think, who was the big hated heel in the 1/97 Kobashi-Misawa match? That seemed to work. The Atlantis/Ultimo Guerrero match last year? Maybe Rollins is a bad example because he's such a cowardly heel but I think a guy like Wyatt can get cheered and everyone can still make money.

Is it really that different than a rudo like Negro Casas getting cheered somewhere and acknowledging the crowd? Or Choshu getting big cheers in 83 when he's technically acting like a heel? Maybe I'm wrong, but I feel like sometimes we get locked into acting like wrestling has to be presented like it was in America in the 80s.

The one thing I can't burn out on is Memphis. I'm trying to watch every TV show from 79-97 that we have and I can watch an episode a night without getting bored.

Literally had a dream the other night that I found out both Flair and Lawler had cancer. The Piper/Dusty deaths hit me I guess.