Matt D

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.

Loved it. Of course I did. I'll probably do a longer write up at some point. Slater, to me, is an interesting challenger for Bock, and a little different than what we often get. He was a few years older than Martel or Hennig when they challenged him but obviously not nearly as old as guys like Verne or Crusher. He was much more in that Martel/Hennig/Brunzell mode, though, just with a bit more grit. He had a sort of authority with those few extra years, but could still match up with Bockwinkel on the mat. They spent the first third/half of the match going in and out of holds and I never tire of it. Bock is king at this, full of struggle and comeuppance with just spot on timing when it comes to when to move out to a spot and back into the holds. They varied the holds up here. I sort of marvel at this every time I see it. Bock is never lost. He's never at a loss. There's always a sense of escalation. Usually, he can't be caught the same way twice, but he always finds a way to show ass, even in the midst of a clever counter. For instance, he's ready to catch Slater off the ropes in the midsection with a shot, but ends up left open for one of his own. It's just perfect title match wrestling in that regard. The heat comes with the legwork and it's short but nasty. I was wondering what they were going to do with the figure four, because it didn't make sense for Slater to lose a fall by submission. That just seemed against his character, but they handled it well with the posting and the rope draping. Then they moved into revenge spots for the second fall. The third, while short, felt warranted due to the damage they'd gone through in the match. Great match up for Bock and just another notch on his belt. I've said it before, but I come into almost every one of these matches with that hint of doubt. Was I wrong? Was I lacking some evidence. Is this the match that's going to show me that Bockwinkel isn't as good as I think he is. And he just comes through every time reinforcing those elements of his work that are simply the ideal. I'm close to the point where I'm just going to stop worrying about it. This was a total joy. EDIT: Came back to add that some of the pinfall exchange stuff in the first fall seemed a few years ahead of its time too.

I guess my point is that there's a sort of conventional wisdom meaning to it if you were to ask people not here? It's nice to know the genesis of it, but it, like workrate or sprint or anything else, has a certain popular connotation. I get using facts to bully away the guy who was exasperating and full of himself, but if you had asked me yesterday before I read this thread, I'd have probably shrugged and indicated I thought "strong style" was more of an AJPW thing than a NJPW thing and really was mainly about no-selling strike exchanges and hitting each other hard instead of actually working that was then picked up by a lot of 2000 indies as they were trying to emulate what Meltzer gave lots of stars to? Obviously, that would have been factually inaccurate in a lot of ways, but I don't think it would have been unfair, if that makes sense.

Yeah. Overblown No-selling forearm and chop fighting spirit exchanges. That's what my brain says.

The Del Rio loss at Mania against Edge sure didn't help Del Rio.

Did he ever brush the top of the card again? (Though he became injury prone after that to be fair).

I think JR caused a big stink at the time, because people were upset about it. He told everyone to wait and see, because the heel turn and getting the title back for another short run was obviously happening. That completely missed the point, however, which was that the fans wanted to enjoy the unlikely feelgood moment with a babyface Christian for a while. It wasn't that they were worried he was going to get depushed. It's that this was something that mattered to them and it felt like the company swept the rug out from it (as opposed to a heel doing it). The heat was in the wrong place. If they were going to go with a long Christian heel run and there was someone else for them to get behind it might have been different (see Survivor Series 98 where they had a real wealth of riches) but both in the premise and the execution, it was a very big misread of the audience. Fans don't always get what they want, nor should they, but if they do stupid shit, poorly executed, then they should get called on it.

Dibiase vs Murdoch is exactly as good as you'd expect it to be, with Murdoch generally holding an advantage and the vengeance deferred again and again as Ted just tried to punch his way back. Just a great brawl. I kind of loved Conway vs Valentine though. It wasn't a great match, but it was exactly what I look for out of this service, a match from 1978 that hits all the right marks. Valentine's limbwork was varied and nasty and so solid. Conway's selling was really strong. It was structure, in two falls, pretty much exactly how I wanted it to be. They started on the mat with real struggle, Conway fought his way back only to eat a nasty table bump on the outside. Valentine pressed the advantage, held it, and then fell to a spirited comeback before things broke down with the interference in the third fall. Just pitch perfect distilled wrestling. Just what I want to be watching.

While I'll be interested to see just how much of the BT, Jr. stuff is going to show up on powerbomb, my wrestling tastes and time limitations are at a point that I'm not going to be dropping money on anything that's not frequently unearthing unseen matches from 78-86. I am glad that people will soon be awash in more content than they know what to do with though.

Is the idea of "Burning Out a Territory" a myth? Did Southwest go overboard with the blood and violence in the 80s to the point where the fans had seen it all? That's the traditional narrative.

Is there a reason why the Owen Hart bio issue of the Observer (May 31, 1999) isn't on the site? It goes from May 24 to June 7.

I too am getting the black friday deal, but mainly to pick up the 98-99 WONs I don't have yet.

Pretty sure there's a Brass Knucks Battle Royal main event, but I'm not 100% on that.

I know multiple kids who stopped watching out of fear of Papa Shango.

I'd like to hear Bret justify the difference between the ringpost bump and the Flair flop. That's not all that hard. Direct vs Indirect. Whether you buy that justification is another matter, but I think it's pretty easy to differentiate. The issue with signature defensive spots is also a direct vs indirect thing. They often rely on the other wrestler doing something that he wouldn't normally do. It's the difference between doing something to a wrestler and having him do something to you. If it's something he'd do anyway, in that way and at that time in a match, great! If it's not, then it causes dissonance. It raises a flag. If it happens as a signature spot in a "Powerbombing Kidman" sort of way, then it raises a huge red flag. It's one reason why the 619 was so effective relatively. That was almost always Rey actively doing something to his opponent to get him into that spot, even if it was using a reversal to do it. It was rarely him reversing something that was outlandish for his specific opponent to do.