Matt D

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.

I think Dawson's ring positioning stood out as a major positive to me in that match. Dash was far more lacking in that regard but they made it work with their struggle and reactions. Dawson came off hugely precise and polished to me. That was pretty much my only non-structural comment on the match.

# of overall title reigns?

TA vs Kelly Kiniski is a perfectly fine young lions opening match. It's early into Magnum's career, which is always cool to see. They work a very simple match, shine headlock, heat headscissors, come out and finish. It's a bit clumsy but the effort level is there and the exuberance makes it worth spending ten minutes on. There are moments where an exchange doesn't go quite as smoothly as it should and it works all the more for it because of the realness in them trying to grab to recover. Also fun is Boesch lauding the first female director they ever had on Houston wrestling. The top of this show looks like a blast too, so hopefully we get it.

Balor, Bayley, Cass, Carmella could for NXT in ten years.

To be fair, 1982 Houston technology looks like this:

It's much more of an Indy gimmick but the fact he can work it into the match puts him over a guy like Enzo who is mostly entrance.

Slater vs Tully/Gino is quickly becoming another one of those legendary feuds as we get more and more of the pieces. I think we have most of the big ones now. There are a couple more tags I'd like to see (Especially the Brody cage matches), plus the footage of when they injure Slater that led to this specific set of matches. And I guess there has to be a turn at some point since Slater was teaming with them just a week or two before he started to wrestle Gino. The high moments have been great though and this was no different. I'm with Pete on this. Manny was big in Houston but a lot of that footage (both as a face and a heel) just hasn't turned up yet. It's obvious that he just got it so intrinsically though, knowing exactly when to play to the crowd and how much anticipation to put into things. He was a ham of sorts, but in a way that really connected. Tully was just a total joy in this. He walked the perfect line between total stooging and a sort of stubborn toughness. They managed to cover a lot of ground in relatively little time. The limbwork was a lot of fun. The KO knee in the second fall was awesome. All of the end match stuff was so heated and violent. And even though it was half the time, Slater vs Tully was hugely economical too. Both of them were coming in hurt and that played into the time they had, keeping in mind, of course, Slater's huge advantage. Great, lost feud.

"Sure Canada. We'll give you a PPV again....."

They do the Pink versions for Breast Cancer Awareness month. They could do blue and red of the normal merch and probably make money, yeah.

The only things with any stakes are the title matches. If they were going to go this route, they had to come up with some sort of stake other than "brand pride."

Thus the PPV ban. The only reason why they went back on it is because demographic changes and the rise of social media have made it so all the crowds are now revolting.

Oh yeah, I need to see that too.

I just watched #1. Thoroughly enjoyed it. Dan Kroffat is the best guy in that specific match, right? That's not a crazy notion is it? I'm not going to get Taue-sized crap for that notion, right? I want to watch basically all of the Dan Kroffat matches now.

Thirded

You call Creationists idiots pretty frequently. Just saying.

I'm behind on everything this week but the Duggan stuff was a lot of fun. I would have liked a bit more of a mauling. I wonder if Pete learned a bad word from Duggan. I liked the Brody match. It had issues (some stuff didn't look great, there was annoying lip service to selling the shoulder at the end). It was about as good as you could possibly expect a five minute Smirnoff/Brody match to be though. There are a thousand little and big things I wish Brody would have done differently (in crowd interaction, in energy levels, in selling, in attributing meaning to things) but the fans bought him on this night certainly.

There can be a middle ground. For instance, there can be a middle ground between Styles going against direction being an issue AND what he said specifically being an issue, and the two of them combined being enough to get him canned.