Matt D

Do you think they've properly utilized that data to maximize their profits?

How do you know they didn't create that portion to a large extent by not listening to the fans? Vince sure as hell isn't going out there and shutting his eyes and listening. (Unless he really is blind!)

It's happened throughout wrestling history. The whole Eddie Graham idea of "listening to the crowd." Heel gets familiar enough with the crowd that he starts to get over with pockets as a face and that pressure builds up. There are generally cool elements to being a bad guy, especially a tough/edgy bad guy. He goes babyface. It's pro wrestling 101. I absolutely think that Cena would have ultimately been more over with everyone as a babyface if he spent a year as a heel at some point. I think it would work with Reigns. I especially think it would work with Reigns because 1) He's become an extremely good pro wrestler, 2) he'd make a great heel right now because he has so much to be resentful about and 3) he can portray the exact sort of heel that would get him over huge as a face with all facets of the audience after a certain point. We've basically already seen that. I get that you're annoyed with people or whatever, and I'm sick of explaining to people why Reigns is actually a really good pro wrestler and having them not even want to engage on the conversation, too, but that doesn't mean that a heel turn wouldn't make him a bigger face in the end. It absolutely would. I don't think the Cena Sucks/Let's Go Cena stuff has actually been a boon to business relative to what something more definitive could have done. I honestly don't.

I tend to look for meaning in matches. For resonance. For weight. Selling is the language of imparting meaning on actions in wrestling. It's the way to show the audience that something matters. Consistent selling over multiple matches is a big part of that. Symbols are defined over time and that shapes how they are utilized. That said, no two matches are the same and no two stories need be the same, and it is situational. It's not a one-size fits all.

Alexa killed it in that opening segment. It's something we've seen a bunch of times before in one permeation or another but that's rarely worked as well as that one did. She's the most nuanced one dimensional character ever.

He should do whatever makes him money in the long term no matter where the idea comes from. Also, the idea is simple logic and following the formula he used with Rocky in 98 anyway. You deal too much with these people, I think.

The idea is to get him cheered later. Recapture the "Coolness," so that when he turns face again he's doing double the merch numbers.

I see it as a loss leader that exists solely for me to get to watch wrestling that I want to see that there's no way in hell I'd be able to see otherwise, the likes of which absolutely does not exist outside of MAYBE the Portland footage (And even then we don't get the big Tuesday shows) due to a genie's wish that I forgot I made. Only crazy people take impossible gift horses for granted.

I don't get why they don't just turn Reigns for 9 months or whatever. He'd be bigger afterwards.

It's also the individual attributes that people value. Offense or bumping over selling. Workrate and cardio over character. Etc.

I get where you're coming from, but maybe you should Get the F Out and go with Ace instead of Face? I think a prerequisite of being a good in-ring face is to get the crowd behind you and while he did it against Brock and Sheamus...

There's a 15 year age difference between them, right? That threw me. I had no idea they were brothers until this thread either. I mean, I probably knew that at some point, but I could also list all the Kings of England from William the Conqueror on and I can't do that anymore either.

It's fun for what it is.

The best comparison would be mid-late WWF Hogan, I'd think, where people paid to see not a variation, but an exact iteration. The difference is in the length of the carbon copy finishing stretch. I don't think there's anything else in wrestling quite like what Guerrero does. It's stock footage, but something like four or five minutes of it. It's like watching Rocky Horror Picture Show and singing along to the same thing you've seen a hundred times as opposed to seeing Bruce Springsteen in concert where you get most of the big hits and the same encore every time but the set list will be at least a little different. I'm not sure I entirely even criticize it (as I do with others) so much as remark upon it as distinct and unique enough that it hampers attempts at comparative ranking.

Maybe he'll learn what pro wrestling is actually about by watching all of this instead?

Work's been so busy that I can't do proper write ups of anything right now. The tag match was great though. I will say something about it at some point. The Putski match wasn't that bad. Lots of headlocks and shtick but it was over and Patton was extremely game for it. The control wasn't bad because he had the crutch of the cast. I got a kick out of the pre-match antics. We're getting most (if not all) of this card. There's a place for something like this on a card like this. There just is. And as Putski matches go, they worked it smart and they had the crowd. It's about all you could hope for in something like this, really. Chavo vs Mansfield just went up and I've got high hopes for that.

I thought you guys did a great job of switching gears and not looking back to. Also, you almost got me to watch some Steiners vs Midnights matches last night (but instead I ended up watching this episode of Maple Leaf Wrestling with Adrian Adonis commentating with Gorilla. Pedro Morales did a Billy Robinson backbreaker to win a tag match with Tito so that was cool).

For clipped stuff, Bock vs Andre or Bock vs Ladd gives you the sense of how he worked a monster face: This is more or less the best Bockwinkel/Stevens we have: which is them working young guys who have to look like gold. This would be the other: I think they changed the video player on NWAOnDemand half a year ago or so. So it'd be worth giving it another look.

Ok. In no order, going with 25 mins or less if possible (so no hour long matches from Hennig or Brunzell): Bockwinkel babyface sprint (vs Larry) Bockwinkel standing tall babyface (vs Hansen) Bockwinkel canny tag (w/Saito vs High Flyers) Every hold matters: (vs Funk) Most fun you'll have today (comedy kingpin: Hogan/Andre vs Bock/Patera/Duncum/Heenan) It's on you that you don't have access to NWAonDemand because the Chavo match where he slowly gets over how dangerous (and underestimated) the local hero or the Atlas match where he carries Atlas to a matwork style championship match are interesting and atypical with the Santana/Slater/Morton footage from there more typical but all excellent. Some awesome promos too. Really any of the Martel matches work but my favorite is 9/20/84

I can't imagine any of those marathon matches were taped.

I'm towards the very end of the Ken stuff so some things might be covered later (and I am looking forward to hearing what Elliott thinks about the Revival tag). I did press him to talk a bit about the Tobita/Ken match in internet wrestling history context. Actually, it's sort of funny that they just drop you in with very little context except for "This is in a gym in japan!" It half makes me wonder if Stacey realized that things like this: happened too (but she's a strong youtube searcher, so I imagine she does). It's hard to understate As it came to internet irony enjoyment of wrestling, the DVDVR guys were 15 years ahead of their time by clinging on to Tobita and Ken as their mascots in 2000. Let me put it this way. By that time, I had seen far more Tobita than I had seen Misawa.

When you guys had gotten through the Ken matches in about ten minutes, I had no idea how you were going to fill the next thirty. I should have known better.

There are times that I worry I am more inclined towards Johnny than Pete on this stuff. For instance, I kept going on to the latter how that heckler carried the first 8 minutes of the match entirely on his own. I liked Gordman vs Leon. It was in slow motion at times but Gordman wasn't afraid to bump and he works as sort of a fake Satanico (which isn't fair to him considering how much of a star in his own right he was in CA), just a rudo's rudo. Leon brings a lot of the tricked out arm drags and the energy. This was an opening match and while I would have loved to hear Boesch commentate on it, when we don't have the commentary, we can really hear the crowd and man were they into it. I'm excited to see more of this card too. Robinson in Houston sounds fascinating. That could be Mansfield's career match, for instance, and Tank's career worst!

So, I'm not going to outright say that Jose Lothario punching people is the best thing in wrestling history but... well, it is.

Look, this is another one of those weeks that really proved how special this footage is. Maybe another service will get you a higher number of current 4* matches or whatever, but this is footage that no one's seen in 35 years that's everything we love about old wrestling. In the last week we had some stuff that was just okay from a quality standpoint, like Slater vs Duncum, but that was also a match that we never even thought about. It was another look at Slater's development in 81, where he was as a main event heel (not where he would be a year or two later), a Southwest Title match, Duncum playing that Mulligan esque babyface again. We got the tag with Manny and Tiger, another great look at mid-card hero Tiger (and yes, he's been a revelation in the footage), just how much of a breath of fresh air Manny must have been in this period, more of just how good Robley was as a grinding heel and sure, another look at Tank, who I think is slightly better than Pete does (in cutting off the ring especially). We had Tiger and the midgets and yes, Ivan was awesome. We've seen a bunch of midget matches from this era now, from this territory and others and there were a few spots in there I'd never seen before that were just so good. And then there's the Lewin face turn which felt like just one of the classic turns. He's a guy who was on the back end of his career but that had been presented for decades as something important. The way he just basks in the crowd, not overly appealing to him, but using his actions and specific moves (like the dropkick) to get over that now he's a face, by decimating both Dillon (who was more than willing to bleed to get this over) and Hart, and then by just holding his arms out as the fans cheered. He was still Lewin but he was their Lewin now. That's what we got in a week, basically. Almost everything there has been unseen for three and a half decades. Just think about that. And I haven't even watched the best match of the week (per Pete) yet, being Gino vs Young. And hey, hopefully we get something tonight or tomorrow too.