Matt D

I personally approve of Robert's username.

I'm not as high on that Charlotte promo as the rest of you, specifically because she didn't have the fans at all. They whatted her most of the way through (which is more on them, but also a sign that they weren't going to buy into this no matter what she said, really) and then booed the hell out of the hug, not buying it at all. It didn't put heat on Charlotte so much as it made Flair just seem sad and pathetic. I'm not sure what to compare it to, recently, maybe the Sasha retirement promo where the fans pretty much bought into it.

I think so, but I'm not sure. If so, I think she'd have an easier time than some people. I know that her democratic opponent for senate in CT has come forward saying she's not a terrible choice, basically.

What's funny to me is how much the cruiserweight division sort of feels like the 1998 WCW cruiserweight division.

Far more problematic is someone like Verne, who'd almost never use black guys, and when he did, it'd probably be Kamala. But then, who drew in St. Paul? I guess the point is that it's complicated and you shouldn't use too wide a brush, neither you nor Meltzer.

Hero randomly going into a Microscope-esque rant on the difference between bumping and selling and how people get it wrong on Reddit was the funniest part.

It's hard to make points not clumsy, when they are completely wrong. Clumsy but not wrong What? Bill Watts was a racist, because he thought the black fans would accept any black wrestler as a star, so kept pushing George Wells, Snowman, etc.. as replacements for JYD. Not realizing JYD was a star, because of his charisma. He's saying that's not racism against black people, but in fact, Bill Watts was being racist against white people there? That's Dave's point, and it's just wrong. Bill Watts was not racist against white people when pushing George Wells and Snowman. Steven, I think Watts understood how charismatic JYD was and how hard he would be to replace. What he was trying to do was to provide representation to a large portion of his audience that had been drawn in by JYD in part (but certainly not completely) due to his race with the limited options he had available. He did this so that they would continue to buy tickets. That doesn't mean he wasn't racist. Maybe he was, maybe he wasn't, but I think that things are much more nuanced than you're presenting. We're in a world right now where there's a lot of discussion about providing minority (racial, lgbt, or otherwise) representation in media. Some of it is well-meaning. Some of it is highly profit driven (such as including generally throwaway Chinese characters and/or moments in movies so that a movie will "draw" in China).

Playing catch up: I liked the Jake/Steiner match quite a bit. You have to love how behind him the crowd was and how excited by it that Boesch seemed to be. Jake was able to give up a lot of the match and hit that lightning DDT. Jake earned all that goodwill from DDP since he took that key element of his babyface act from Jake. I thought Steiner showed a ton of potential as a heel here, actually, and it's a shame that once he turned, we didn't see him as a heel again until 99 when he was over the hill. I'm weirdly tempted to revisit that stuff. We were all so furious as a community that he was going over Benoit and what not that we probably didn't give the actual work a good look. His instincts and crowd interaction was really good. Also really good was Williams in that role. He's such a natural babyface in Houston/Mid-South that it's obviously how he should have been cast but he seemed like he was having so much fun in the Gibson match. And to round out the heels, I can't get enough of heel Duggan. I love the Mil match and I liked this a lot too. He just had this manic energy to him. There's basically a year+ of him being a heel in Houston, so we've got more to come, ideally. Some of the match ups really look fun too. Dusty and Brody (which seems a natural fit) and Wahoo and Rich and Slater and Murdoch and Morton. Varied, interesting opponents. It's something to look forward to. I wish that Sheepherders vs Bruise Brothers went longer. Yes, Houston was super patriotic, but the Russians didn't get the same level of heat that the Sheepherders seemed to. It's amazing watching them go out every time. Babyface Bruise Brothers with that entrance is really cool too. The comeback here, as fleeting as it was, had to be the best moment of Mad Dog Boyd's life, with the crowd getting behind him like that. the Houston crowd really is the best. Good week or two of matches. Keep 'em coming.

Bix, go write something about the Independent Contractor stuff that gets picked up by a bigger news source. Iron's hot.

This is the "rematch," though I can't speak to the quality. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xe4sgd_rockers-jim-duggan-vs-powers-of-pai_sport (and a promo setting it up: )

Like classifying employees as independent contractors?

I'm through the first half, so I can only speak to that, but while Pete is always consistently solid on whatever podcast he's on, I do want to go out of my way to point out that I thought Johnny was excellent and insightful over the first few matches. Earth-3 indeed, Pete (I know you said 5 but you meant 3, though Johnny is the Uncle Dudley of online wrestling).

I'll do a full write up for SC later, but I thought the attempts to win with the corner touching were excellent, actually. In almost every chain match you see, actually trying to win the match is an afterthought, just something brought in for the finish or maybe for a mid-match transition. Here, it was front and center in the back half, and I thought that played perfectly into Jovica's underdog aspect. There was some great symmetry too, with Abdullah blocking the fourth corner on one attempt and then Jovica doing the same immediately thereafter, and some clever bits earlier on like Abdullah rolling out to stop the corner touching and some last second cut offs with Abdullah or Jovica dashing across the ring at the last second. I thought it worked hand in hand with the bloodiness too because it was about each wrestler surviving the war by winning the match. I'm in a different place than most of you on this one.

Watching that match, I thought there WAS a long run of KENTA-Shibata tags. They worked very well together. Most natural thing in the world.

I think some of it is probably how extreme Alexa's character is. She's basically the embodiment of nastiness. You don't want to see that break in the same way that you don't mind other characters breaking. I don't see it as breaking at all. She just reached the pinnacle of her profession, in front of her parents. Seems like a pretty reasonable time to be happy and not a piece of shit for a few minutes. Maybe if she had better parents, she wouldn't be a horrible kayfabe monster? They're probably poachers.

I think some of it is probably how extreme Alexa's character is. She's basically the embodiment of nastiness. You don't want to see that break in the same way that you don't mind other characters breaking.

I had gotten busy with other things, such as Thanksgiving and work and sickness. It's a little harder to watch things this time of year just because so much is going on. I still have a couple of matches GOTNW recommended, but I wanted to get to this one since it bumped the thread. Akira Taue/Go Shiozaki vs. Katsuyori Shibata/KENTA (09/09/06) The best way I can describe this is that it would be a match that I would have probably loved if it wasn't in 2006 NOAH. I completely understand why someone would suggest it to me, but I had a hard time getting past some of the trappings. The basic premise was amazing with KENTA and (especially) Shibata being absolute punks to Taue, just riling him up and mocking him and disrespecting him at every turn. Taue has such goodwill with the crowd and such accumulated meaning and familiarity that they're able to use that as capital in the match. They can tease his moves and the crowd reacts. In that way things don't have to be earned. They just have to be utilized, and they are. Shibata was the real star here. Past a few hard kicks and the ability to move really fast, KENTA didn't show me nearly as much. Shibata was an absolute dick, coming at Taue in weird stalling angles instead of just locking up (Taue responded by teasing a crane kick), making sure to attack him on the apron again and again whenever Shiozaki was in (KENTA does this too). In the States, that would lead to illegal doubleteaming as the ref held back the babyface on the apron, and here that happens once, but it's really much more about the disrespect in this match. He even nailed Shiozaki twice with Taue's jam-head-into-knee for huge mocking heat. My biggest problem with the match was Shiozaki. It's Japan, sure. It's 2006. I get it. In his role, showing fighting spirit and popping up again and again as "hope spots" was more than fine. It got old as the match went on though and it made it hard for anything to resonate too much. This happened all the way to the hot tag, which was just Shiozaki popping up and hitting a strike of his own one more time. It's not that it's unbelievable or that it lessened the meaning of things (though ultimately it did; at times they were going at so quick a pace that nothing had a chance to set in. It was exciting but hollow) or that nothing Shiozaki did ultimately felt earned: it was really just how unimaginative the counters were. There wasn't really a sense of fighting back to me. Instead it was more a decision not to sell. The few times where they did do something, like KENTA and Shiozaki blocking kicks or a foot coming up on top rope move, it all happened too quickly and consequence-free in the grand scheme of things to really resonate. There was a lot to love here, but it was almost all centered around Taue and Shibata. Everytime Taue actually got his hand on Shibata it was gold, early on with him absorbing Shibata's best stuff and firing back to the crowd's delight (ending with him tossing Shibata out and teasing a dive), after the hot tag when Taue had to sustain double-teaming before he could get his hands on him, and the way he had to fight out of a potential doomsday device, hit a second rope big boot and catch KENTA in a nodawa off the top before he could finally hit it on Shibata. By the end I really wanted to see a singles match between the two. So yeah, there was a lot to love here and I though Taue and Shibata both had great performances, but the trappings drag me down. Shiozaki drowned in the expectations which defined him in the match and I feel like 06 KENTA's biggest strengths actually worked out to be his biggest weakness. 3.5 NOAHs (as always, not a match rating). notes:

Working on it.

It's probably a lack of female representation in STEM programs thing.

Where did you get that number? Fujiwara.

I didn't know 48 PWO people had ballots.

I wonder if a lot of the people who think Sting should be in also think Big Daddy should be in.

Do you think there's an argument that Sting's influence case has grown? I'm not saying I agree with it, and if I had a vote I wouldn't vote for Sting, but there's a certain aura around him that has grown in recent years. He's looked at as a legend by a large subject of mainstream wrestling fandom. There's a certain influence that he has. I don't think it sniffs Bryan's influence, or Punk's for that matter, but there's something there. What has he influenced?

I've been half-watching the 81 GCW Kris posted while taking care of some work. Masked Superstar is a really great heel ace. I love that he kicked out the list of accepted challengers.

I for one happily accept our brave new world where Sting, the inspirational force behind John Cena's prototype hair, is in the WON HOF. I will happily brandish such counter-factuals as "Well, if he wasn't in WCW in the early 90s, it would have tanked completely." and tout the fact that Bill Apter suggested to me that if he wasn't a huge draw for PWI covers, they wouldn't have put him on the cover consistently. All is right in the wrestling world.