Ditch

A fitting send-off to their rivalry (ignoring the forgettable 2004 match), and one of the better 1/4 IWGP matches of the '90s. A more definitive finish than they normally had to go with their usual intensity.

He's Waylon Mercy enough as it is without having the same finisher.

The thing about AJ '97 is that there's MORE total footage of it than any year the company had before, due to the Samurai footage. There just wasn't much good content on those shows, because the AJ undercards were reduced to utter trash at that point, and main event 6-mans didn't have "it" anymore. Lots of factors leading to that, such as the steep drop in the number of good foreigners available and the lack of good young lions following Akiyama's debut,

I am deeply confused about what you're talking about.

Recently watched this, and it's a rare Tenryu match where the execution is bad enough for me to sour on it. Fujinami wasn't great, but he brought it at times, and Tenryu's botches took me out of things. Execution and layout prevent me from enjoying the 1/4 Choshu match as well, even after a ton of viewings.

I think that says something about Lawler as a performer: he can have a great segment by himself just ad-libbing.

The baffling thing about Joe is that he went from untouchable to "hey let's have him pin Misawa and get a title shot with no build whatsoever" in late 2007. Right now the rule seems to be done away with, if Kenny Omega is any indication.

http://www.tmz.com/2013/07/14/ric-flair-ex...arrest-warrant/

It doesn't have a watermark. The quality isn't high because when they were posting these like 7-9 years ago that was a standard bitrate. I was downloading from their site for a brief time so I know first-hand.

Old bump but I just noticed this. The full version was posted on the NTV website but I'm 99.9% sure it didn't air on AJ Classics. Same thing with the 7/26/91 6-man.

And it's downright objective compared to a typical "Hulk Hogan remembers..." quote.

Can someone PM me Rippa's email?

I don't see how it's a bubble. The #1 reason for the rights increase is the fragmentation of US audiences, so big advertisers struggle for a platform to get ads out that saturate the public (or at least a segment of the public). And despite my sentiment that ads don't account for the entirety of the broadcast rights increase, it's certainly MOST of the reason. Considering that prices weren't hurt by either of the last two recessions, and that ad money isn't reliant on a single industry, I see no reason why this won't continue unless sports ratings take a dive.

...which completely ignores how astronomically fast the broadcast rights price has gone up over the last 10-15 years. The ratings stuff was all true 20 years ago. And granted, advertisers now pay a higher premium for shows with certain ratings levels, but really, it's pretty clear that networks have bid the price up quite a lot and squeezed the straightforward profit out. Considering how worthless Sunday afternoons are to ABC and NBC at this point, if they knew they could have essentially free money from the "cash cows" by upping their bids a bit, they'd have done it already. I know I've seen articles in the Wall Street Journal about this but that was years ago and I'm too lazy to find them. So I'll just toss this out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Foot...her_realignment

"complotist" isn't a word, but it should be.

Oh and even the old "favorite takes a dive so those betting on the underdog make a mint" reason is out since Weidman (bafflingly) had the shortest odds of any Silva defense.

Tonight's UFC card featured maybe the greatest finish in MMA history, as long-reigning and seemingly untouchable champion Anderson Silva was felled by unbeaten but unspectacular challenger Chris Weidman. Silva, who taunted and played rather than trying to win, pretended to be wobbled by a missed punch only to be caught on the chin and (as Meltzer wrote) "knocked the fuck out". The unusual nature of the fight has MMA website commenters foaming at the mouth claiming that Silva took a dive. Nobody can debunk this better than a wrestling fan. -The punch, the set-up, and the sell, are better than any two cooperating pro wrestlers could possibly hope to pull off in the heat of the moment. They would have had to work together extensively to have even a tiny hope of pulling off that sequence. Not to mention that the punch landed flush and Silva's head bounced off the canvas. -Dana White and the rest of UFC management are clearly very smart, very profit-driven people. I doubt that they would risk the company's credibility by paying someone to take a dive, but let's say they were going to do so. Would they take that risk for the sake of any scenario other than Chael Sonnen winning last year's rematch to set up Silva/Sonnen 3, let alone for Chris Weidman, possibly the most anonymous and vanilla champion in company history? At least in a hypothetical Sonnen scenario, you have a Great White Hope who can talk and is very much a company man; that trilogy match would have been enormous. Weidman is Some Guy. Having him dethrone Silva (and end any chance of a Silva vs Jones/GSP superfight) is bad for business, period. Nash over Goldberg at Starrcade '98 was a questionable decision by WCW; this would be like having Bobby Duncum Jr beat Goldberg. -If you're going to book the rematch (which is the only Weidman fight anyone cares about), you BOOK THE REMATCH. Instead they immediately announce the rest of the year's PPV fights and Anderson says he isn't sure he wants a rematch. 7 months from now there won't be half as much interest in a rematch, if it even happens then. So, as much as people want UFC to be pro wrestling, tonight it isn't.

BUT THEY WERE MENTIONED IN USA TODAY!!! That totally justifies anything because short-term mainstream publicity trumps absolutely anything measurable such as buyrate and ratings.

There's a letter in the recent archive Observer from '96, where Joe Silva (now UFC booker) picks apart how Pancrase was heavily worked. That might interest any MMA fans out there who subscribe and don't read the letters.

Only uber-smart fans ever watch a shoot, so it's not like he's doing much/any harm there. Although his WWF 'shoot' promos are something else entirely. Also, even though the overwhelming majority of the public knew wrestling was fake, I think there was a clear subsection of true marks (and kids) that helped form a baseline amount of heat. Once you have that it's easier for 'smart' fans to feel comfortable cheering/booing in general.

Bad WCW 1999-2001 Dangerous ROH with Gabe Sapolsky on commentary Baby One More Time Every Momota vs Eigen match CrazySexyCool Flair promos

Steph being shaken by her husband suffering a bad, possibly (in-ring) career-ending injury is a "horror story"? Really?

I never thought about it like this before, but he went over several top 'end of WCW' stars within a few months in 2003: Steiner, Booker and Nash.

What the fuck is that supposed to be on his face. What.

Tanahashi/Suzuki is way long though. For All Japan, I'm not sure Misawa vs Kawada 1/99 is the best bet. Hansen vs Kawada 2/93, Hansen vs Kobashi 7/93, Misawa vs Kawada 7/95, Misawa vs Kobashi 10/97 are all action-packed and much more solid. The latter has a ton of bombs without much downtime. re: Funk vs Hansen, it's the '83 match on the AJ set you want. '82 match is also darn good but not quite as epic. For MPro, you can't go wrong with These Days, but the ECW tag and the 10/10/97 6-man are shorter and also very fun. More Japan possibilities: -Funaki vs Nakano from the Other Japan set. Compact and intense. -Can-Ams vs Kobashi/Kikuchi -Ishikawa vs Ikeda from Futen in April 2005. Off-the-charts-stiff and IIRC is under 15 minutes. -One of the multi-way trio matches from Toryumon: 7/7/02, 7/14/02, 8/30/03. The latter is the best. -Hashimoto vs Tenryu from G-1 '98