Matt D

My dad has been telling me about that episode all my life! It was the Tron of bladejobs.

Glad that I found something you hadn't seen (I threw a hail mary there because you've seen a lot of stuff). It really is a hell of a sprint with a great crowd and a ton of traditional, classic babyface fire by Hennig. Very much looking forward to what you've put in front of me because it's far out of my wheelhouse. Will check it out in the next couple of days.

Works for me if it works for you.

More people can join up, certainly. It's a bit tricky with an odd number, but we'll work that out. Oops. That's because I had to run the random things twice because I missed the two latecomers the first time. I won't fix it or else I'll kill your joke. ANYWAY, I think I know what I want jmare to watch. The #5 result in the DVDVR AWA 80s set. 05/31/86 AWA World Heavyweight Champion Stan Hansen vs Curt Hennig.

Week 2: I think everyone's come through and it went well. People seemed to enjoy it. I'm glad. If you haven't had a chance to hit your match yet, that's ok. You're just generating a backlog for yourself. In the meantime, come up with one for your new partner for the week so that they can keep rolling. I took a quick glance and it doesn't look like anyone's matched up with the same person again. CapitalTTruth PeteF3 SPS Rah topropepodcast WingedEagle SirEdgar Matt Franklin Matt D Jmare007 Grimmas AstroBoy C.S. Wahoo's Leg Laz soup23 dawho5 Jetlag Nintendo Logic Tim Evans Beast Richeyedwards I'll try to have a match for jmare later in the day. Thanks for participating. dawho5 Jetlag

I'm playing catch-up and cherry picking. The Sami Zayn episode was excellent. Sami put forward an idea that you learn so much more about how to wrestle when working under a limitation (be it a match or even an injury) and that very much resonated with me because I've always felt like you learn a lot about a worker from how they work with a limitation (including, yes, aging). I find Sami's concept of a good match having to be like Terminator 2 (Good story, Good characters, Good action) very interesting. It's a different but similar take on the workrate arguments we've had, though I think we pick things apart slightly differently. Some of the talk about the "This is Awesome" chants are interesting, but they never see them as bad, just something that they have to make sure is genuine. How he learned psychology was interesting (wrestling in a bubble in Quebec and then having Super Dragon put some pieces together for him). Little touches from Vince (he should smile, not scowl as a heel). How (according to Balor, and they sort of agree) great matches are ones that stand the test of time, which feels very anti-meltzerian.

Maybe one that was slightly more representative of the two years of discussion leading up to it. I look back on the whole thing extremely fondly though. No regrets.

From the outside in because i see myself sitting this one out due to other responsibilities, I guess what I'm going to be most interesting in seeing is how people shape their criteria. How much do you value checkhov's gun, or a proper balance between shine and comeback, or clever transitions, or downplaying obvious cooperation in setting up spots, or counters. What about "learned psychology" where a match plays on previous matches. Etc. People will have to come up with their own metrics to compare matches. Or not, I guess.

No, but Great Wrestler Theory does.

One week from the start of this will be Tuesday. I think I'll tally who's finished and see if I can reshuffle for week 2 based on that. If someone hasn't had a match suggested yet (especially if they suggested one of their own) I'll have to figure out what to do there. We'll see. So far, so good though.

"Build" is the wrong word. I'd use "Sputter" or maybe... http://www.celebrateboston.com/strange/cow-paths.htm

That sounds krone-meltzer interesting, therefore not really interesting to most of us if the year is no longer 2001 or so.

Has Mid-Atlantic gone up yet?

You guys are doing great by the way. Thanks for everyone who's giving this a shot.

Who am I to doubt El Boricua? Secret Santo sounds good to me. Thanks for the match. I'm only back on Disc 3 of the PR set and at the rate I'm going, I'd not get to that match for another year. It was a blast. http://prowrestlingonly.com/index.php?/topic/35590-los-invaders-i-ii-vs-chicky-starr-ron-starr-52588/ I'm glad you liked Arn vs Barry. It's amazing how much good wrestling was littered on WCW C shows in the early 90s.

To me, this was all about balance. Not every tag team match has to be worked exactly the same. That said, I do think the end result has to be balanced. The heat has to work relative to the shine. The comeback has to properly pay off the heat. If you have something in the pre-match (like, let's say stalling, or in this case a promo) or a post-match beatdown, it all plays into this. I wouldn't say that this was the perfect tag match, but I would say that it was perfectly balanced. Hopefully I can make that make sense. All that said, the shine was perfect. Yes, Invader 2's pokey punches were the best. Chicky's physical reactions were amazing. He could be in there bumping like Curt Hennig and it'd be all wrong. Instead, he had the physical grace of a guy stepping on a rake and getting whacked in the head and it worked so well. I'm not going to say it took as much skill as what Hennig did, but it did take skill and control and even more than that a willingness to look ridiculous and it worked. Again, though, there's balance. The transition was Invader 1 putting his head down and Chicky getting his foot up. Sure, the tide really doesn't turn 100% until Invader 1 reversed a whip into the corner and Ron got his knee up to catch him, but they made Chicky look canny and dangerous like a cornered rat, even in the midst of it all. That's important. Then, just to drive the point home, all the points home really, the brunt of the heat was Invader 1 getting mauled with his masked turned. It worked, but in the moment I wished that it could have been longer. It felt like they spent as long turning the mask as beating him down. Ultimately, it was the right call though for a few reasons. The first is that while it was a smart temporary ploy, it was ultimately flawed. The whole time I'm watching this, I'm thinking to myself that I want to love it, but it kind of makes no sense. This isn't Atlantis or Hijo de Santo. We know what Invader 1 looks like. The mask is something he puts on as part of a tag team solidarity thing. As cool as a notion as it was, I was sort of doubting the whole thing. So after about two minutes, when he gets the first real chance to do so, what does he do? He pulls the mask all the way off and starts to fire back. It's like an explosion, the impact of the comeback. Even so, in a normal situation, you'd want longer heat somehow. Here, it was fine and balanced because what would come. The comeback wasn't long but it was definitive, with Chicky and Ron both bleeding. Ron carried around such an air of competence to him and him pulling down the rope on Invader I and grabbing the chair that ended the match felt like the most natural thing in the world. Again, they got stooged at the beginning, only controlled the match by turning Invader 1's mask, and lost control the second he pulled it off, but they maintained their heat brilliantly here with the post match, utilizing a chair, yes, but using it and the numbers advantage to take out three men when they were only two (and not just any three). Invader 1 ended up in a pool of blood on the outside; Invader 3 was just decimated by repeated shots to the throat, brutal; Colon was so smart as an Ace, making sure it took three chair shots for him to stop fighting back, but ultimately, he was left a bloody mess too. The understanding of how pro wrestling works and should work here was just brilliant. Because of the way the match was worked, the Starrs came out of this looking like they could and would get destroyed the next time the babyfaces got their hands on them in any sort of fair fight, but they were the ones who were left standing, making the crowd want to see (and pay to see) that destruction with every iota of their being. Great pro wrestling.

Done. You're paired with Jetlag. I'm sure he'll come up with something good for you.

Absolutely. We've got an even 20 right now, so if someone else either pops up (or drops out), we can slot you in. Otherwise, once someone's finishes, if they want to do another for this week, they can pair off with you (and if no one manages it, I'll do double duty with you).

Ok. Here's my pick for dawho: I took a quick look and saw that he's going through the 1991 yearbook right now. He's not QUITE to this point, but this is probably my favorite WCW match of 1991 that DIDN'T make the yearbook. Barry Windham vs Arn Anderson from the November 2, 1991 episode of WCW Pro. It's a pretty deep cut so I don't think it's on youtube, but the episode is on dailymotion with watchable VQ. Match starts at the 24:00 minute mark. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2ivgm2 Here's what I wrote about it three years ago: http://placetobenation.com/the-column-beyond-the-great-hunt/

Ok. Here are the initial randomized pairings for the pilot based on the people who showed interest. If I missed you, let us know. If you can't do it this week, let us know. Randomizing with everyone's networks was a bit too tricky first thing on the Tuesday after New Years so either check in the thread or ask people via PM, etc. If a match isn't easily available and it's not clear, maybe check with your partner via PM to see if they have access to it. It's generally fast and loose. I put a 30 minute limit on matches, but I'm sure exceptions can be made if the other party is willing. Reviews can go here too but they should ultimately end up in the MDA. This is a pilot so it's possible there will be kinks to work out. There's no real time limit to this but let's try to move swiftly. Laz Richeyedwards CapitalTTruth Jmare007 soup23 Tim Evans topropepodcast SirEdgar WingedEagle Beast dawho5 Matt D PeteF3 Wahoo's Leg Grimmas Rah C.S. AstroBoy SPS Nintendo Logic I'll have a match selected for dawho later on today and will post what that match is here.

I guess if I'm putting together a spreadsheet for this, I'll toss on everyone's stuff too (I've got some yearbook access but not a whole lot else right now). Aiming to have things together by Tuesday for the pilot. Definitely happy for the interest. I think this can be a really good thing for the year.

I miss NWAonDemand, even with all of its flaws and even with my utter lack of time.

I think Arena Mexico might make sense if we go back into the 70s or earlier but who knows what we'd get at that point. Otherwise, if 80s, then yeah, UWA. I'm tempted to get the Tuesday Portland shows from 1980. That's sort of the crux of this. Do we go with a known quantity to fill in blanks or something that'd be all new to us. I'd be tempted by year in the 70s for Amarillo for instance.

Very glad people are interested. I'm thinking of just giving it until the weekend, tossing everyone into a list, and randomizing it and pairing people that way to start. We could do a pilot to start and just see how it goes before figuring out whether it's weekly with me randomizing the list each time or if people can match up with each other voluntarily after the first round or what. Don't get too caught up on the Secret Santa aspect. That's just how it came to me. Everyone will know who they're partnered with for the first around of this. I know that I'd personally go and look at the person I drew and some of their previous posts to get a sense of what they might have seen/haven't, etc., if I'm not 100% familiar with them but that's just courtesy and to make it more fun. No one would be obliged. I think we'd have a central thread to keep track of who's watching what with links to the MDA matches in question.

Cheers to 400 pages of this, my friends.